Catholic Theology Plain Pure Peaceable

They hold free-will to good: that unregenate men have free-will without God's special Grace; and regenerate men have free-will to do good and forbear evil, even when Grace effecteth not the event.

This is an English Objection. What men that write in Greek or Latin deny Free-will? Did not all the ancient Fathers and Churches hold it till Augustine 's time, of whom we have any notice? And are you coming to turn Christ's Body into a Heresy, or the members of an Harlot by your charge? Did not Augustine, Prosper and Fulgentius hold it? Who denied it for above a thousand or thirteen hundred years after Christ? And do you deny all free-will yourself?

No; but it is free-will to spiritual good.

What need I tire you with the same things again. 1. Read but what I said to A. of Free-will. 2. And see the Table of it in the Second Book. 3. And peruse what I have just now said of the power of the Will, and you will see that here is no more necessary. Make not new words to seem a new Controversy. Put but Liberty for Power, and and the answer to the last Crimination serveth to this.

The tenth Article of the Church of England saith, [The condition of man, after the Fall of Adam, is such, that he cannot turn and prepare himself by his own natural strength and good works, to Faith and calling upon God: wherefore we have no power to do good works pleasant and acceptable to God, without the Grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good Will, and working with us when we have that good Will.

I had rather you dealt plainly, and kept close to the word of God, and evidence of Truth, than seek shelter from the words of those in power. But what Jesuit or Arminian will not subscribe to this? Who doubteth of it? How oft do they all maintain the necessity of this preventing and co-operating Grace? But by the words [no Power] you must not understand no natural power or faculty, but no moral power: For 1. Else man is no man. 2. It is a moral Subject which they speak of, and must accordingly be understood.

But what Free-will is it that you deny? Tell me what you mean by Free-will?

If you know what Will is, and what Free is, you need no exposition: the words are plain enough of themsel •• s.

Thus do men strive about words that profit not, to subvert the hearers, and increase to more ungodliness. Answer me these Questions.

Quest. 1. Hath not the Will more than a Liberty Political, or by God's Law to forbear sin, and to do all good? Doth God forbid it?

No; he commandeth it, which is more than leave or license.

Quest. 2. Do you think that the Will is forced? Is it not a contradiction to Will unwillingly eodem respectu?

Yes: we all hold freedom from compulsion.

Quest. 3. Is not man's Will a self-determining faculty or principle naturally; so as to be Domina suorum actuum under God?

Yes, under God; the understanding directing it.

Quest. 4. Hath not the Will power and liberty to choose evil, or to sin, without God's predetermining premotion?

I dare not deny it, though many do▪

Quest. 5. Hath not the Will a certain command over the inferior faculties respectively, and can move or not move them?

Yes: supposing it moved accordingly itself.

Quest. 6. Can Angels or Devils necessitate the Will by any efficient predetermining premotion?

No: I think not; for its commonly thought so.

Quest. 7. Can any man by force or flattery necessitate another man to will anything evil or good efficiently?

No: They may strongly tempt, but not necessitate.

Quest. 8. Can mere Objects as such necessitate the Will to a comparative act, that is, to choose this rather than that, (de mediis)?

To good they cannot: but I doubt of it as to evil, whether Objects do not necessitate some men, so that they cannot forbear.

Who made these Objects, and causeth their nature and existence?

God made all things: Meat, Drink, Pulchritude, Money, &c.

Doth God then necessitate men efficiently to Sin by Objects.

I say not so: For Objects are not efficient.

True; as Objects they are not: Therefore they effect not: Therefore they do not necessitate properly, which is an efficiency: Indeed they are but causae quasi materiales actus in specie seu individuo, and constitute it, and no act is without its Object: But they effect it not.

Doth not the Sun effect our sight by its light?

Yes: but not as a mere Object, for so it only terminateth and constituteth it as the matter: But it causeth it efficiently as an Agent.

Well! I will suppose that so far as a wicked man is necessitated to sin, it is his pravity that doth it circa objectum (ut sine quo non) and not the Object itself efficiently and in proper speech.

Quest. 9. Is the Will efficiently necessitated by the senses or fantasy?

No otherwise than as by the Objects which they do present?

Quest. 10. Is it so necessitated by the Passions?

I know not whether I may say the Passions do it, or its own pravity, when the passions do disturb and tempt it.

Quest. 11. Is it so necessitated by the Intellect?

So Cameron and several others thought, and consequently by the Objects: But I have many reasons against that Opinion quoad media, in comparate elections. But the Intellect may necessitate it circa finem; 2. And quoad media, in specificatione, etsi non quoad exercitium actus.

1. Quoad finem, it is not the Intellect that necessitateth, but the natural inclination of the Will; Intellection is but a previous act sine quo non. 2. Where there is no exercitium actus, there is no specification. Therefore you can only say, Non specificatur sine ductu intellectus; but the Will can prevent that ductum intellectus, if not suspend its act also after it.

Quest. 12. Can any one but God, by force, impress ill habits on the Will.

No: we were miserable if any could make us wicked.

Quest. 13. Will God ever make any such evil habits in the Will.

As a habit he may cause it, but not as evil.

Quest. 14. Do you think that a Sinner is necessitated to every sin that he committeth, or to every Duty which he omitteth, so that he could not do otherwise?

I think he is under a necessity of sinning: but I cannot say it of every sin which he committeth.

You before granted many things to be in the power of the Will: And can you deny that power to be free, that the same things are in its liberty: I will tire you no more; but desire you, 1. To peruse all your former concessions about man's power. And 2. To peruse all the twenty Concessions of A. Confer. 5. Criminat. 1. where he denieth Free-will in all those senses, and then tell me, where is the difference?

They think that our freedom is inconsistent with necessity; but so do not we, who think that Decree and Predetermination do necessitate.

I have forced you before to confess your concord here. A Logical necessitas consequentiae in ordine probationis, Arminius and almost all men confess doth result from mere prescience. And Dr. Twisse professeth, that neither the Protestants or the School-men hold any other necessity to result from Decree or Predetermination.

But the pravity of the wicked necessitateth their Wills to evil.

1. Not to all evil: For 1. Men commit not all: 2. And you before confessed, that men can do more good and less evil than they do. 2. The truth is, as I distinguished power before into Physical and Moral, so must we do Liberty and Necessity. The Will hath its physical Liberty, and is free from physical necessitation, in all the sin that men commit, and in all the good they do (I think) though not from all Divine predetermining necessitation to good: Men do not good and evil as Bruits do their acts. But the Will hath a kind of moral necessity of doing evil, by radicated habits, and hath no further moral Liberty, than it is freed from the power of those evil inclinations. But these habits necessitate not physically, but morally, and that only to some sin, but not to all. A man can act contrary to a good or evil habit, as common experience proveth. But because men's Volitions and Actions are ordinarily or much agreeable to their fixed inclining habits, therefore we use to say that morally such can do no better; meaning that they will not.

But sure you would not have me believe that there is no difference betwein us and the Arminians in the point of Free-Will?

If there be any, either you know it, and can name it yourself, or you know it not, and then may be ashamed to contend about it. Quest. 1. Tell me plainly, Is not all the Liberty which you deny a moral Liberty a malo, from sinful dispositions of the Soul?

There is much dispute about Liberty from Divine predetermination; But I will not meddle any further with that. I never contended against any Free-will, but freedom from sinful habits, as supposed to be in men more than it is.

Quest. 2. Do you not hold then that all men have Free-will so far as they have effectual Grace, and Sanctification.

Yes, in that degree: For voluntas per gratiam liberata est libera.

Quest. 3. Do the Arminians hold that the Wills of the graceless and unsanctified are freed from sinful habits? and so are morally free to holy acts.

No, I confess they do not: Corvinus and others oft say, that it is Grace that giveth us the vires credendi which we had not before; But some of them deny any habits to be in the Will: But these say the Understanding must be enlightened before we are able to choose aright.

Quest. 4. Doth not common Grace give men a moral Liberty to common good, from all necessitating inclinations to the contrary?

Igranted it before as to Power, and therefore must as to Liberty.

Where then is the difference between you?

I take it to be here, that the Arminians and Jesuits say that the Wills of the Unregenerate are not only free to common preparatory good acts, but to the special acts of Faith and true Repentance and Conversion unto God, which we deny.

Either you mean this of all unregenerate men, or but of some: 1. Of all they say it not: For the Synod of Dort chargeth them but with saying that men can use their naturals, so as by degrees to come up to Faith. They commonly hold, that ordinarily the Will must be prepared by commoner Grace, before it (morally) can believe, though such are freely Unbelievers, having a natural liberty or power to the contrary, though undisposed, and have a moral power and liberty to some preparatory acts. 2. But if you mean it of those that are come up to the highest preparatory acts, and also have God's Grace ad posse credere, where there is the posse morale, there is moral Liberty so far. But whether this be really any man's case, or how many, to have Grace to enable them to believe who yet never do believe, is a Controversy which I find not Protestants apt to meddle with; And it is too hard for us to decide.

That is the very heart of the Controversy, whether ever God give immediate Power and Liberty to believe to any one, who never believeth and useth it.

Where do you find this Controversy much meddled with, unless by the School-men, who assert sufficient ineffectual Grace to believe? But this belongeth to the next Article (of Grace) though here you anticipate it. But if this must be it, I shall briefly dispatch it. 1. Adam 's instance hath already made you confess, that such a thing there hath been, as Grace ad posse & non ad agere, called sufficient but ineffectual Grace? And your confession of all the foresaid powers that men have by common Grace (to do more good and forbear more evil than they do) yieldeth that yet such a sort of sufficient Grace ad aliquid there is.

2. The course of God's Administrations, maketh it seem most probable, that some and many have such a mere sufficient Grace to believe and repent: For if Adam had such a Grace enabling him to have fulfilled the whole Law of Innocency, it seemeth proportionable that the Rector of the World give some such a Grace to fullfil the mediate Law of believing and repenting, who use it not.

3. It's common with Dr. Twisse to cite Augustine with approbation as saying, Posse credore est omnium, credere vero fidelium, and to make this the great difference of effectual Grace from that which is more common, that it giveth not only the Posse velle & credere, but the Act.

4. But yet because we can know no more of God's secret workings than he discovereth, I take it to be dark and dubious: But that this is certain, that whoever wanteth the power or liberty of Will (moral) to repent and believe, they are penally denied it, for not using that power and liberty which they had, to inferior preparatory Acts. And you can carry this Controversy of Free-will no further.

And is it not then a horrid shame, to hear honest people so seduced into Love-killing factious sidings by their Teachers, as that Boys and Women speak of wiser and better persons with disaffection and reproach, saying, O he is a Free-willer, or he holdeth Free-will, when they know not what they talk of: but are made believe that it is some monstrous impious Opinion, making a man almost an Heretic? When even you that lead them are unable to show me any proved (at least considerable) difference at all.

Are there so many Books written de libero arbitrio between Jesuits and Arminians, and us, and yet is there no difference?

1. I do not say that no man that ever wrote of it, hath wrangled himself into any words of ill signification, or taking up anymore than is defensible. 2. But if the main Controversy be not Logomachy, why do not you tell me what the real difference is? It is not fair-dealing to make me ridicuous for calling to you to name the difference, and yet yourself refuse to name it, and make it good. Will you assert what you know not, and accuse men without proof?

They hold that the Unregenerate are not dead in sin, and void of all spiritual good.

Do you think that they differ from you herein? This was spoken to before. 1. They hold that the Unregenerate have natural life, and so do you. 2. They hold that their faculties are bonum natural, and so do you. 3. They hold that common Grace is bonum morale, at least Analogically so called, and so do you. Indeed as bonum is ex causis integris none on Earth is morally good, no nor doth anything that is bonum morale, because it is imperfect; and so our defective holiness is not bonum morale in that sense: But as good is so called from the predominant Will, the godly have bonum morale: And as it is denominated from that which is not predominant, yet real in the Will, the Unregenerate in their common Grace have bonum morale. For common Grace is not merely quid physicum, nor merely sin. 4. De nomine, whether we shall call this spiritual good or not, when we have a Grammar written from Heaven, or by Apostles, we shall have more mind to dispute with you. But I told you once already, that 1. As to the efficient, it is spiritual, that is, common Grace is wrought by God's Spirit. 2. As to the end slightly and uneffectually wished it is spiritual; But as to the truest end (the pleasing and glorifying of God) predominantly and effectually willed and intended, it is not spiritual. 3. Nor as to the manner, if the exercise of such an intention be called the manner. Tell not men that we differ, because you can bring forth ambiguous words, and there dream of a difference; but plainly tell me, Are not you and they thus far agreed? and is not this all that's in your charge?

They hold that man is not merely passive in his first Conversion to God, which is contrary to us and to the Truth.

When will the Lord give his Ministers as much skill to heal, as to wound? to find out real concord as to make differences in their Dreams and Fictions? Do you think indeed that you differ in this point?

Or else I must think that we may be ashamed to show our faces to the people, if we make them believe that we differ when we do not, and thereby stir up their distaste of others.

The question may have three several senses of passiveness, as man is considered, 1. In his Nature. 2. In his Action. And therein, 1. In the reception of the Divine Influx. 2. In the acting thereupon. And so the questions are, 1. Whether man's Soul be an active nature, or passive matter only? 2. Whether man's Soul be merely passive in the reception of the Divine Influx ad agendum? 3. Whether man's Soul be merely passive in its own first act of Faith or Repentance? Tell me, Are not these three distinct questions? And are they not all that you can devise? (unless you will make another, whether we are merly passive in the preparatory part?) And are you not now ashamed to confess that you need any answer to any one of these three questions.

I. All the world is agreed save the Hobbists, and Somatists, and Sadducees, that man's Soul is not mere passive nature, but is an active nature, inclined to Action, as passive Elements are to non-action: And that when God moveth it, he moveth not Earth, Water or Air, but a Spirit, whose nature is self-moving (as fire) under the first mover.

II. All the world is agreed, that the Soul and all Spirits are not, so purely and merely active as God is, but are partly and first passive; and that they do and needs must be receptive of the Divine Influx before they can act: For all Creatures depend on the first Cause, and both Being, Nature and Action would cease, if God's emanation to it ceased. And all the world agreeth, that no man before Conversion or after doth any act of Faith, Love, &c. no nor eating, and drinking, and going, &c. but he is in the first instant passive as influenced by God, before he is active. Who ever doubted whether physice recipere be pati? Did you ever know such a man?

III. All the world is agreed, that man is not merely passive when he acteth. An Act is an Act sure! And to believe, repent and love is an Act, and an act of man's Soul. And Scotus who thinketh that immanent Act: are qualities (as we think of habits) yet thinketh that the Soul is truly active antecedently to that quality. Where now is there any room for a Controversy?

You would make me believe that we are very ignorant Wranglers, that make a noise in our dream, and will not suffer others to rest! Do not the Arminians say, that man concurreth with God to the first act of his own Faith? yea that he maketh God's Grace effectual.

You shall not again tempt me to anticipate the question of effectual Grace, though enough is said before to it as far as this Objection is concerned in it. God's Influx on the Soul is one thing: man's natural faculty receiving that Influx passively is another: And man's Act is another. To thrust in here a general word [man concurreth] and so to run away from clear and necessary distinction, is not the part of a man of knowledge. Did ever man yet deny that man herein concurreth as aforesaid? 1. Man concurreth not to make his Soul, nor to continue it in being or power. 2. Man concurreth not as any efficient of God's Influx on his Soul ad agendum. 3. But man receptively or passively concurreth as a Receiver of that Influx. 4. And man actively thereupon concurreth to believe and repent. Is not all this true?

But you would tempt the Arminians to say, that it is you and not they that are herein to be accused? For what mean you else, by confining the Controversy to the first act of Faith, or to our first Conversion? Would you make men believe, that a converted man is not as truly passive in believing, loving God, &c. as the unconverted is? Must not the holiest person be passive in receiving the Divine Influx on his Soul, before, he do any holy Act? You seem to deny this? and then you are the person that err, by ascribing too much to man. If not, show the difference.

There is a habit of Faith goeth before the first Act: And it is in respect to that habit that the Arminians say we are active procurers of it; which we deny. But the godly operate from a habit.

You speak a private Opinion of your own brain, against the sense of the Concordant Churches. Where doth Scripture say, that a habit of Faith goeth before the first Act? Mr. Pemble saith so indeed: yet he sometime calleth that but a Seed, which at other times he calleth a habit. Dr. Ames in his Medulla contradicteth it. Bishop Downame hath written a large Confutation of Mr. Pemble. The generality of Protestant Divines contradict it, and thus (with Rollock de Vocat.) distinguish Vocation from Sanctification, that they suppose Vocation to cause the first act of Faith and Repentance, and Sanctification to give us the fixed habit, the act intervening. Mr. Tho. Hooker is large upon it, in his Souls Vocation. Will you start one man's Opinion, which Calvinists and Arminians are against, and feign this to be a difference between Calvinists and Arminians? And perhaps Mr. Pemble himself, by his first semen or habit, meaneth no more, than the Divine Influx ad actum received. I have before told you how unsearchable the nature of that Influx is, and how hard it is to know the true nature of an Habit.

But Mr. Pemble saith, It is the Spirit that is given before we believe.

Away with Ambiguity. By the Spirit is meant either the mere received Influx of the Spirit ad agendum; and so it is granted: Bad men receive the Spirits Influx to such acts as he moveth them to. Or else you mean, the foresaid fixed Habits and Dispositions, to a ready and facile ordinary Operation. Or else you mean, the Spirit given relatively by Covenant, undertaking to be the Sanctifier and Preserver of the Soul. In both these latter senses, the Spirit is not given before the first act of Faith, to Infidels. They have not the fixed habits of Holiness, Love, Hope, Obedience, &c. Otherwise they were holy Infidels. No Scripture speaketh it: nay contrarily it promiseth the Spirit as to Believers, and affirmeth it given after Faith, Eph. 1. 13. Joh. 14. 17. & 15. 26. Gal. 3. 14. & 4. 6. Joh. 7. 39. And that the Holy Ghost is not given in Covenant to Infidels I need not prove, to them that will not baptize Infidels.

They hold that none are damned only for Adam's sin imputed.

And I think so do all Christians, or should do. 1. Of all the Adult there is no question. Is there any that hath no sin of his own? Or doth God forgive all their own sin to the damned? And as to Infants, 1. Wise men should not vex God's Church with matters no more revealed. 2. All the Scripture maketh them members, as it were, of their nearer Parents as well as of Adam, and as I have proved to you, threateneth them for nearer Parents sins (even in the Second Commandment, and Exod. 34.) as well as for Adam 's. And all the world being, Gen. 3. 15. brought under a Covenant or Law of Grace, which conditionally pardoneth all sin, the not-believing of the Parent, is the cause of the non-liberation or not-pardoning of himself and his Infant. How can you say then that they suffer only for Adam 's sin? 3. And sure their natural pollution is their own sin: And the Church of England, Art. 9. thus describeth Original Sin:

I include this Corruption when I speak of Adam's sin imputed; And though the Article mention not this Imputation, I suppose it was but through forgetfulness, and not that they denied it, as no part of Original Sin.

I have nothing to do with that, and am no judge of other men's thoughts that are dead. All that I desire you to observe is, that all understanding Protestants agree, that the sole Law of Innocency [Obey perfectly and live] is not the Law that God governeth the World, or any in it, by, since the Covenant of Grace was made, but all are under a Law of Mercy: And therefore Parents and Children, in and out of the Church, are judged by that Law which they were under, and not by the Law of Innocency alone, without any remedying Law of Mercy.

1. The word [Sufficient] is sometimes taken, for all that is any way needful, and so it is that they commonly deny sufficiency of ineffectual Grace. More Grace might have certainly produced the Effect. A man is commonly said to have enough who needeth no more. Now more is here useful, needful, desirable to the facilitating and ascertaining the event. If you are not agreed with them in this, why do you pray for more Grace, and labor for more, and take it to be a sign of sincerity to desire more. For if the Regenerate have not Grace enough, surely the Unregenerate have not.

2. But in this Controversy the Dominicans and Jesuits, by sufficient, mean that which giveth the posse agere, that is, so much as is of absolute necessity to the act, without which it cannot be done, and with which alone it can or may be done. And in this sense the Protestants generally, and the Synod of Dort particularly deny not that there is such a thing as sufficient Grace. I have oft told you, that 1. They confess it in the instance of Adam. 2. They confess it in the case of common Grace, enabling men to common preparatory duty, which many are able to do, and do not; as I have evinced before in many instances, and the Synod, and specially the British and Breme Divines assert. 3. And as to the point of Faith itself, whether any unregenerate man have sufficient Grace to believe, which is not effectual, I find few meddling much with it. 4. But they commonly (I think) agree, that all regenerate men themselves have sufficient Grace for many an act of Faith, Love, Obedience which they never do. Is it not one of the Opinions which at Dort and frequently these Divines reject, as falsely imputed to them, that a man can do no more good, and forbear no more evil than he doth? And if he can do more, he hath power to do more: And power to act, is that which is called sufficient Grace.

Therefore I need not trouble you anymore with this Controversy, seeing under both the notions of Power and Liberty, it is decided, and confessed by you to be so before.

Remember that all sufficient Grace is effectual; but not effectual to the act: It doth efficere potentiam, enableth men to act: but doth not cause the act itself, unless it be efficax ad actum, as well as ad potentiam. How ordinarily do they profess the possibility of doing more than is done, by godly and ungodly, and that all the power that men have is not reduced into act. Yea when some assert Predetermination itself, they say that it doth not destroy Liberty or Power ad contrarium, but only determine it.

It is bad enough that they deny all sufficient Grace to believe that is not effectual, though not to other acts.

You wrong them: They do not so: Have I not told you now, that they commonly grant that even the godly themselves have sufficient Grace to believe, which is not effectual as to many an act of Faith? And as to Unbelievers, 1. They say that all have not Grace sufficient or necessary to believe: And so say the Arminians. 2. But whether any one have or no, who believe not, they rather leave it to the Searcher of hearts as an unknown thing to them, than deny it. But they seem to infer that it is most likely to be so, in that 1. It is so with the godly themselves. 2. And with all other men, as to other acts of common Grace. And they all agree (as I said before) that no man is denied power to believe savingly, but for not using as he could his antecedent commoner Grace. And I think neither Party knoweth more than this, and in this both are agreed. And he that will assert his uncertain Conjectures, and then pretend that this is a Church-Controversy, is the maker but not the ender of Controversies.

Some of them stick not to say that Adam himself had not Grace sufficient to stand, or forbear sinning: and if so, then there is none such.

We have nothing to do with any odd persons words. Who is it that never speaketh amiss? I confess Dr. Twisse, Vind. Grat. l. 1. par. 3. de Reprob. sect. 2. pag. (Vol. minor) 306. saith, Gratiam ad peccatum vitandum necessariam duplicem esse dicimus; aliam ad posse vitare peccatum; aliam ad pecatum actu vitandum: illa est Gratia Regenerationis—Altera non in est homini per modum habitus, sed per modum passionis; & est motio quaedam gratiosa in voluntatem influens, & ad omnem sanctam actionem extimulans.— And so one or two say that Adam had Grace necessary ad posse stare, non autem ad actum. But this is but a few men's odd Opinion, contrary to plain truth. I mean, If by necessary ad actum be meant in the proper School-sense (not all that is conducible to ascertain it, but) that sine quo esse non potest, it is a contradiction to say that men have the power to Act, and yet want that which is necessary to the Act, that is, that without which they cannot Act. It is plainly, [They Can] and [They Cannot] (For we talk not de potentia passiva which a Stone, Tree, or a Beast, or a mad Man have). This distinguishing of things that differ not, must be detected, as well as confusion avoided. To say a man can believe, or hath power to believe, and yet wants that without which he cannot believe, is palpable contradiction.

And where he maketh Regeneration to give the posse, before the Act, he speaketh obscurely or unsoundly. God's active Influx on the Will, exciting it to Act, is (at least) part of his Regenerating Grace. A man is not Regenerate before he ever actually believed or rep • nted; though he first receive the Divine Influx ad agendum: Nor can he prove that any proper habit goeth before the first act. And whether it do or not, most certainly the nature, faculty, and the habit, and all together, is truly and formally no power ad hoc, to believe or love God, or do any good, without God's necessary Influx, Concurse or exciting Grace: No more than a Plant hath a power to fructify without the Sun or Earth: Of God's help ad been esse we speak not: But to say that God's exciting Grace is necessary ad actum, without which the Act cannot be, and yet that we have a power to do that Act without that Grace, is still a contradiction. This is potentia hypothetica & aequivoca, a term fit to play with: But it is true power, where nothing of absolute necessity sine quo non esse potest is wanting, which our Divines do commonly confess that Adam had, and that all men good and bad have to more good than they do. Therefore I find not that you are in that disagreed.

And Dr. Twisse, as I told you, oft and vehemently professeth, Vindic. Grat. de Amis. Grat. Cont. Bellar. pag. (Vol. Minor) 230. c. 2. & 232. that man hath no necessity of sinning ex decreto, but logical consequentiae: But if it were true that we wanted that Grace which is absolutely necessary to avoid sin, it must needs follow that such are under an absolute present necessity consequentis also of sinning; as much as of dying, when God ceaseth to continue life. And if he mean that the Decree necessitateth not sin, but the denying of necessary Grace doth, he should have said so.

Andr. Rivet Dispute. 7. de Grat. Univers. p. 113. saith, [Sed non quemadmodum Pomificii & alii qui eorum sententiam vel sequuntur vel interpolant, nobis imponunt, ita ut plane negemus sufficientis Gratiae phrasin posse usurpari, aut dicamus nullam esse sufficientem ullo modo, quae efficax non sit, vel nullam esse efficacem quae ad conversionem & salutem non sit efficax—Id tantum dicimus, non dari omnibus talem Gratiam sufficientem, quae ita moveat omnium hominum voluntates, ut sit in potestate electionis motioni aut obtemperare, aut res • agari: adeo{que} nullum esse qui per talem gratiam non possit ad salutem pervenire, Deum{que} id velle omnibus & intendere.] You see that he will own no more, but the denial of a universal sufficient Grace for Salvation, intended of God, to all men. And you yourselves confess, 1. That God intendeth not Salvation for all men, unless conditionally, if they believe and repent, which from eternity he knew before he made them, that they would not. 2. And that all men have not sufficient Grace to Salvation, no nor to believe, but only to make them better, and bring them nearer it, and prepare them for it; (which some call Grace mediately sufficient to Salvation; but that's an improper Speech, as long as for want of their Obedience, they never attain to much that is absolutely necessary.)

For my part I doubt not to assert, 1. That no man in the World hath Grace sufficient for Salvation, that is, Glorification, an hour before he dieth: For he cannot be saved without more; that is, without the Grace of perseverance to the end. But every believing Penitent hath Grace sufficient and effectual to give him a present Right to Salvation. And 2. I add, that there is no such thing as Grace sufficient to Salvation which is not effectual, and doth not save. Seeing all that persevere in holiness are saved; and they that do not, have not Grace sufficient (that is, necessary) to Salvation. 3. And I add, that no man hath Grace sufficient to give him a Right to Christ, and Pardon and Salvation, which is not effectual, and doth not procure it. For every penitent true Believer hath that Right to Christ, Pardon and Life: And he that is not a penitent Believer, hath not Grace sufficient to obtain that Right.

Yes, if he have sufficient to help him to believe.

Not so: unless he actually believe: For is not Faith in act, somewhat more than power to believe? When you confess that men are damned that have the Power, but not that have the Act.

Yes; but man causeth the Act oft, when God hath given only the Power, and necessary concourse to the production of the Act.

Corvinus and others of you ordinarily confess, that Faith itself is the Gift of God, and that Faith is more than a power to believe. And we denominate God's Grace by the various effects: Therefore I may say that a man that hath Grace sufficient to believe, yet hath not Grace sufficient to Justification, till he have, 1. The Grace of Faith. 2. And so the Grace of the moral donation of the Covenant, which is the justifying, pardoning Instrument.

You seem then to deny sufficient Grace yourself.

I assert, 1. That godly men have power or sufficient Grace to many acts of Faith, Love and Duty which they never do. 2. And that all men by common Grace, or sufficient, are able to do better than they do, in preparation for special Grace. 3. And that they are bound so to do, in order to their Salvation. And so that all men have some helps and Grace in its kind sufficient to enable them to seek Salvation, and that God will not forsake them till they forsake him.

But doth not your Church of England, Art. 13. say, [Works done before the Grace of Christ, and the Inspiration of his Spirit, are not pleasant to God, forasmuch as they spring no • of Faith in Jesu Christ; neither do they make men meet to receive Grace, or (as the School Authors say) deserve Grace of congruity: yea rather, for that they are not done as God hath willed, and commanded them to be done, we doubt not but they have the nature of sin.]

This Article is intended against merit of congruity in the works of wicked men. And it is certain, that all their works are sin, in that they are in defectiveness of ends and manner, and in perverseness, the violations of the Law of God, (as to pray to God only to be saved from Hell, without love to God, and Holiness, or hatred of Sin; to give Alms for the same ends, &c.) where the love of God, the true end is left out, the action must needs be sin. But we say not that it is only sin, or totally sin. It is good and pleasing to God secundum quid, though not simpliciter: And such Actions as are sin by deficiency, may have a tendeney to better Actions, and so to Salvation, by that good that is in them. He that in mere love to his own Soul, will pray, hear, meditate, avoid sin, &c. is in a likelier way to Grace and Life, than he that will do none of this.

And 2. The Authors of the Arti • le, by merit of congruity, meant somewhat more than preparation for Conversion; For no English▪ Divines, I think, have denied that.

3. And by [Works done] they meant such as the Papists taught men too much to trust in, as giving Alms, building Hospitals, going on Pilgrimages, &c. which went under the notion of Sacrifices and Oblations under the old Law, when God said, He abhor • d the Sacrifice of the Wicked, and bid them be readier to hear, than to offer the Sacrifice of Fools. But it is not, I think, Soul-humbling Repentance, Confession; begging for Grace, considering their Ways, hearing the Word, &c. though but such as preparatory Grace may do, which they meant by Works.

4. And that is not done without Grace and the Spirit of Christ, which is done but by his common Grace; And yet I could wish the Article had been better worded.

But if you will see the consent of an hundred and twenty ancient Writers, and sixty three Protestant Synods, Churches and Divines, for Universal Grace, read Dallaei, Apolog. part. 4.

I am sure God saith, That he would not the death of a Sinner, but rather that he repent and live, and that he would have all men to be saved, and come to the knowledge of the Truth, which they deny.

No man denieth it, who denieth not the Scripture. And I can hardly believe that really you differ about the meaning of the words.

Quest. 1. Do you believe that God is absolutely unwilling that any perish? and absolutely willeth that all shall be saved?

No: but conditionally he is.

Quest. 2. Do you think that he absolutely willeth the performance of that condition?

I know you will say, If absolutely, it must come to pass, or God must be overcome. If conditionally, how doth he will that condition? and so in infinitum? But I will say, that he willeth it absolutely, and yet is not overcome or srustrate by a greater Power. For he willeth it only voluntate inefficaci, or with a velleity, which is not a willing to do it all himself, but that it be done by man.

If he will that man repent eventually, with an absolute Will, the Impenitent then frustrate his Will or Desire. And it is a note of infelicity to have absolute Desires not obtained: If God's Will be not done, is it not for want of Power or Wisdom to accomplish it?

No: it is because he willeth not to effect the thing, but that man effect it.

If you had said, that he conditionally willeth that man effect it, the failure had been no frustration: But that had been but to say, that he willeth that man shall will if he will; or at least, if he excite his own Will; and so the question would recur, How he willeth that excitation. But seeing you say, that God absolutely willeth that man shall will or excite his own Will, you must needs mean that God desireth that which he cannot obtain, and so is imperfect?

No: I only say, that he desireth that which he cannot obtain by man's free agency, without exerting more of his own efficient power to obtain it. He could obtain it, if he would do all that he can.

This is no more than to say, that either properly he doth not will that man excite his own Will to the act (in that he will not do that without which he knoweth it will not be done); or that he willeth it but conditionally, [If so much help will procure it.] And for want of plain opening the case as it is, you do but entangle yourself in unintelligible words, when you talk of ineffectual velleities of the event which yet are absolute.

How will you explain it better?

As is sufficiently done before. 1. God absolutely willeth that it shall be man's duty to repent and believe. Duty is the thing antecedently willed with an absolute Will. 2. God willeth that Heaven shall be his due, if he perform that condition. 3. But if he will not perform it, that Hell be his due. This Will is conditional as to the thing willed. 4. These Volitions of God belong to him as Rector, (supposing him a Benefactor) giving out his benefits by a Law. And this Will is expressed by God's Law, which actually constituteth the absolute Debitum obedientiae, and the conditional debitum premii vel poenae. 5. The condition being past, God's consequent Will is absolute de premiando vel puniendo: He willeth the death of the Impenitent consequently. And this is but God's Will, qua judex, expressed by his Judgment actually. 6. Though in strict sense, the thing that God antecedently willeth is not the event, but the debitum vel jus, man's duty, and his due thereupon; yet because it belongeth not to a Legislator as such to do anymore towards the event, than command it (supposing necessary power and helps) therefore after the manner of men, it is said, that God willeth the event (Repentance and Salvation) because he willeth to do so much towards it, even all that concerneth him to do as a mere Rector, (besides the donation of necessary power or help as a Benefactor.) And this is all that you mean, in which both sides are really agreed.

I confess we use to explain it by his Antecedent Will, and saying that quantum in se, he would have all repent and live. But by quantum in se, we do not mean that God doth as much as he is able to it: Therefore your explication seemeth true, as well as conciliatory, that he doth quantum in se as Rector per leges, supposing also his necessary help.

So God delighteth not in the death of Sinners, because it is not his Antecedent Will that they die, but only his consequent, on supposition of impenitency which he willeth not: And also because it is the good of Justice, and not our death and hurt as such, or for itself that God loveth and delighteth in. But when men return and live, they fulfil his antecedent Will, and do that which he loveth as good in itself.

And he would have all men come to the knowledge of the Truth, and be saved; that is, He obligeth both Ministers to preach to them, and others to pray for them and help them, and themselves to obey and receive his Grace; And he giveth them means, and giveth Christ and Life by free donation to all, on condition they will but accept the Gift. And he that strictly willeth this much, may be said after the manner of men, to will the event. And this is all that both sides mean, if they understood themselves.

The great difference between us, is, that they hold God's Grace to be unresistible; As if it did move man as a stone, or a dead body, and did necessitate or force the Will of man: Whereas we hold, that God worketh by such moral, internal and external suasion on the Will, as taketh not away the power of resisting and doing the contrary.

I confess this is the Point that maketh the greatest noise. But let us inquire how far indeed you differ.

1. Resistance is Passive (as a hard block resisteth the wedge) or Active (as Fighters do resist each other.)

2. Resistance is effectual (when the Resister overcometh) or ineffectual (when it is overcome.)

3. The Act of Resistance, must be distinguished from the power of Resistance: And to overcome actual Resistance, from the destroying of the Power.

4. Physical and moral Power of resisting must be distinguished as is aforesaid.

5. Real and Logical Power of Resistance also must be distinguished as afore.

Well: How do you apply these distinctions?

1. All the gracious Operations of God on the Soul of a Sinner, are not only resistible, but ever resisted, both passively and Actively, in some degree. 1. Materia passiva qua talis, is said to resist the motion of the active nature, in that its own nature is averse to Action, and the motus must be violentus. And though man's Soul be not material, yet as under God it is substantia passiva, and so passively may be said to resist, in a lower sort, that is, to require the exerting of the Power of the Agent to its motion: Though this putteth God to no difficulty. 2. But sinful Privations and Indispositions make the name of passive resistance to the Grace of God, yet more apt. 3. And the contrary operations and re • itence of a vicious Mind and Will, are an active resistance. Though it be above our reach to know in what sense it may or may not be called a Resistance as to God's Act in itself (God being not passive); yet that it may be called a Resistance, as to the effect, is past doubt; (As I resist a man's Work, if I undo what he doth, though I touch not him.) All penitent men's consciences tell them that they resist God in all the good that he persuadeth them to, and doth them.

2. No man actively resisteth God, but by his own power: That is, 1. God as the Author of Nature, keepeth up natural Power, and concurreth with it. 2. Man vitiateth and perverteth this, in morals. 3. God by outward and inward motion doth Operate towards the rectifying of it. 4. Man using his natural power viciously against those rectifying Operations, striveth by it against God's gracious Work, and so resisteth him by his own strength.

3. When ever Grace effecteth the Faith, Repentance, Obedience which it moveth us to, it overcometh all our actual resistance. Grace is not always overcome, when it is resisted. To say that effectual Grace overcometh resistance, is but to say that it is effectual.

4. All Grace which is sufficient, that is, which giveth all that is absolutely necessary to the effect, is not victorious or effectual; and so it is resistible, as that signifieth superable, and that ineffectual; that is, all necessary sufficient Grace is not effectual.

5. It is an improper phrase to say that God's Power is overcome: For it is not done by a greater Power. But when God will put forth but a certain degree of Power in his gracious motions; the motions of natural power perverted by Vice, may be greater than them: And when they bring forth a contrary effect, are said to overcome them.

6. Therefore whether Grace be de facto resisted or not resisted, overcome or not overcome, is no matter of controversy, seeing the event doth decide the question.

7. Grace where it overcomes, is not properly said to overcome the mere physical Power or Act as such, but as perverted, and viciously used against God.

8. The power of sinning may be said to be overcome, when it doth not perform the presently-endeavored act, but the contrary.

9. The Power may be said to be overcome, when it is destroyed, and is no longer a Power ad hoc. And so the natural power is never properly said to be overcome by Grace, but to be determined.

10. The vicious moral Power, which is but the evil habit or disposition, is always overcome by effectual Grace, as to that act where Grace prevaileth. But not always thereby overcome in itself as a habit, and destroyed; till the contrary habitual Grace destroy it.

All this is past all Controversy on both sides: And if so, tell me what difference about the irresistibility of Grace remaineth.

It will put a man's brains hard to it to follow you, as you mince the matter by so many distinctions and propositions.

And you put men's Consciences hard to it, to fire God's Church, by contending where you differ not, or can show no difference.

Quest. 1. When you say that Grace is resistible, do you mean that de facto, it is never effectual and overcometh our resistance?

No: then no man should be saved.

Quest. 2. Do you mean that man's Will is more powerful than God?

You need not ask me such a question.

Quest. 3. Do you mean that God never putteth forth so much power in his work of Grace as man doth in resisting it?

Here I must distinguish also: 1. Power is so called either as in se, in the virtue, or in the effect. 2. Power in man is so called either as merely man's, or as God's that worketh in man. And so I answer, 1. God's Power in itself which way ever it worketh (in man or out of him) is the same, neither greater nor less than itself, for it is God. 2. Power in itself as God's is infinitely greater than man's as such. 3. As power is so called from the effect, it is no Controversy: For the event still telleth which is the greater, or prevalent therein.

You have answered well. Quest. 4. You do not mean I know that in the instant of acting, the Soul that willeth can nill the same thing at the same time, in the same respect, much less after the act is past, that it hath a contrary power ad praeteritum? It is, I suppose, only in the instant, antecedent to the act that you say Grace is resistible?

You may easily be sure of that.

Quest, 5. If you mean only that the natural faculty was potentia libera activa ad utrumlibet, till Grace procured it to determine itself: And so that Grace destroyed not the natural Power or Liberty; do you know any that differ from you in that?

No, if they may take freedom in their own sense.

Enough of that, I hope, before. Quest. 6. If you mean that the moral Pravity of this natural faculty, was such as could have prevailed against Grace, though it did not; do you not speak unintelligibly? For either you speak of a Logical possibility only, or of a real strength or power; If of the former, you equivocate; and you differ not from others: For you oft confess, that God's mere Prescience that it will not be, doth infer a Logical necessity consequentiae, and so a Logical impossibility of the contrary. But if by [Could] you mean a real strength or opposite power, you mistake the matter. Moral pravity is not strength or power at all; But the perversion or disease of strength or power.

So that the case is not unsearchable: when a man is converted, what hath your question respect to, in the word [Resist] but the Act, the vicious habit and privation, and the natural faculty? Is there anything else to be considered?

Not that I remember; what then?

The Act you confess is procured, and therefore not resisted (effectually.) 2. The privation resisteth but passively, and so hath no active power. And to say that the privation of Faith could have resisted the Grace that wrought Faith, implieth a falsehood, if you mean it of active power or resistance. 3. The contrary habit is not a power, but the ill disposition of a power. Therefore if it be de facto, overcome as to the act by actual Grace, or in itself by habitual Grace, it is on a false supposition to say, that it had power to have resisted, when as it hath no power, nor is a power. But if you speak of Logical possibility, its impertinent equivocation. 4. All that remaineth then is, that the natural faculty in the antecedent instant wanted not power or freedom to the contrary act; which is true, and none of them that are intelligent deny. For God by determining a free power, doth not destroy it, but use it, and determine it. And God's change of the Mind and Will, is not by any diminution or fraction of the power of it, but by a sapiential and loving efficacy, acting it aright, and more advancing it. Even in our after lives, he doth not take away our natural power to will and do evil, but he taketh away the vicious disposition of it, that we may certainly will and do well. Tell me yet then where is the difference?

Though you over-whelm me by distinctions, you cannot so blind me, but I know a difference between these two Opinions, [when Paul first believed, he could have resisted and not believed,] and [He could not resist, and not believe.]

That is, you have learnt of the Masters of Confusion and Dissention to strive about words, which you understand not; and having the Foot-Ball before you, you will drive it on. But little know you whither? nor how little thanks the great Shepherd of the Flock will give you at the last. Either show us the difference, or be ashamed to pretend a difference.

I perceive that the Controversy about Resistance is resolved into that of power: [Can and Cannot resist], which was opened before.

1. They assert an Universality of Grace to all men, sufficient to their Salvation.

I hope you have no malignant desire to extenuate God's Grace, but are willing to acknowledge it to be as great and large as indeed it is, if you can discern the proof.

God best knoweth how to honor himself.

Quest. 1. Do you think that all the World, or all that shall perish, yea or any part of the World is under the mere Curse of the Law of Innocency, as violated by Adam, without any remedy or mercy.

I think they are without real Remedy, though not without all Mercy; for a delay of punishment is mercy.

Quest. 2. Do you think that they are only under the Curse of that Law as the Devils are, without any possibility or offers of a remedy; or that they are also still under the Covenant-Offers of Life, upon condition of Innocency.

I cannot suppose God now to offer a man Life, on condition he be no Sinner, whom he knoweth to be a Sinner: For such an Offer is equivalent to a sentence of Death, or denial of Life. Nor can I say that they are as desperate as the Devils, because they know not the desperateness of their case.

Quest. 3. Do you think all the difference between them and Devils lieth in delay and ignorance of their misery? Then the most ignorant and presumptuous of them is the least miserable, though the most sinful; which cannot be?

Quest. 4. But do you think that no Me • cy is to be offered • o such?

Yes: because we know not who are Elect, and who not.

Quest. 5. Are we to offer men mercy only as Elect? or rather as Sinners and miserable, under a Law of Grace? and as Subjects of God obliged by that Law to accept it?

We offer it to all Sinners, that the Elect may receive it.

Quest. 6. Are none but the Elect under a Law of Grace, as the rule of their Duty, their expectation and of Judgment?

Others may be under the Obligations of it, but not under the G • a • e of it.

Remember then, 1. That they are not lawless. 2. That they are not under that mere violated Law of Innocency, [Be innocent and live.] 3. That they are under the Obligations of the Law of Grace.

Quest. 7. Is there any of them that are not bound to use certain means appointed of God, in order towards their own Salvation?

They are bound to intend their own Salvation, and with that intention to use some means: But God intends it not.

Quest. 8. Doth God command men on pain of damnation to any vain endeavors, or use of means?

He commandeth it not in vain: for it shall make them unexcuseable. 2. They are not to judge their endeavors vain, because they know it not. 3. But in the issue all will be in vain to them.

Quest. 9. Would it be in vain to them, if they really did the utmost that common Grace enableth any men to do?

It is not properly Grace to them, and so not common. 2. It would be in vain to them.

Quest. 10. Is that vain which bringeth a man into the nearest preparation for special Grace, and nearest to the Kingdom of God?

To the Elect it is not vain: Nor to others for their sakes: Nor to others, as to the lessening of their pains in Hell: But as to their Salvation it is.

Quest. 11. Who would it be long of (or be reputed the Cause) if it be in vain.

Of themselves, who are born in sin from Adam, and are Unbelievers.

You suppose it impossible for them to believe, and impossible for them not to be the Children of Adam. They made not themselves, and you suppose that for want of Grace they cannot believe.

We know not how God will glorify his Justice, or how their Consciences will torment them. It may be they shall then be as ignorant of the necessitating cause as now.

1. Do you know it now, and shall not they know it then? 2. God telleth us the contrary, That all hidden things shall be brought to light, and that God will justify his own proceedings, by proving that men's destruction is of themselves, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the World be guilty before God: And he calleth it his Righteousness in judging, to give to every man according to his Works: and that men's Consciences shall then excuse them or accuse them, when God shall judge the secrets of their hear • s, (and not when he shall torment them, by deceiving them,) Rom. 2. 2 Thess. 1. 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Matth▪ 25. & 7. 23, 24. 2 Tim. 4. 8, 9. Rom. 14. 10. Gen. 18. 24, 25.

Quest. 13. Do you believe that none but the Elect have now any real mercy, besides a delay of their future misery, and hopes of its abatement.

I do: For all things are to be judged of by the end: And that is really no mercy, which is not intended to a man's happiness, but his misery. As Afflictions are no evils to the Elect, because they are intended and work together for their good.

Is the offer of Christ and Life no mercy? Is all God's patience and forbearance, as a means to lead them to repentance, no mercy? Is all the teaching, persuading, entreating condescension of Christ, no mercy? See what error here you run into, and how contrary to Scripture, and to nature itself?

1. You contradict God's Word, which frequently calleth them mercies, Psal. 145. 9. & 106. 7. 45. Neh. 9. 19, 27, 28, 31. Jon. 4. 2. Rom. 2. 4. Matth. 18. 33. Isa. 63. 9. Ezek. 16.

2. You deny the chiefest part of men's duty; even to accept of mercy, to improve mercy, to be thankful for mercy, to be led by God's good-ness to Repentance, to use mercies as God's Talents to his Glory, &c. If you say, They know not but they are mercies; you feign God to bind men to duty, but by deceit: It is as mercies, and not as that which for ought they know may be mercies, that they are to be valued, used, &c.

3. You excuse men from the greatest aggravation of their sin: even sinning against Mercies: How can they sin against them that have none.

4. You feign God's Justice to be stragely glorified, by damning men in Hell forever, for sinning against mercy, who never had any to sin against.

5. You will make Conscience justify the Wicked, and condemn God's Judgments in Hell, instead of justifying God, and accusing themselves.

6. You must accordingly conclude that you never shown mercy to Child, Neighbor, or any but the Elect yourself, (because it was all to end in misery) or else that you were to them more merciful than God.

7. When man is made in God's Image, and we must be holy and merciful as our heavenly Father is, you set all men such a pattern of mercy and justice, as you would be loath your Prince or Parent should imitate.

8. You expose Christ's most compassionate tears to reproach, when, Luke 19. he looked on Jerusalem and wept over it, as having had a day of mercy; and when Matth. 23. he saith, How oft would I have gathered thee as a Hen gathereth her Chick • ns under her wings, and ye would not.—

9. You teach all God's Children in the World, to acknowledge no mercy, nor be thankful for any, till they are sure that they are Elect. And how few have that assurance?

10. You injure the Lord Jesus and his Covenant of Grace, while you say, that a conditional Gift of Christ and Life, Pardon and Salvation, even if they will but accept it, is no mercy to any that refuse it; nor yet the blood that purchased it as such.

11. You measure and denominate God's great Mercies, according to man's vile abuse: As if it were no mercy, what tendency soever in itself it had to their Salvation, unless they accept it, and use it well, or if they reject it.

12. You are singular from almost all the Churches of Christ in the World: Contrary to the judgment of the ancient Churches, and of all present Chu • ches of Greeks, Abbyssinians, Arminians, Papists, or Protestants: expressly contrary to the Synod of Dort, and the particular suffrages of our British Divines there: except a very few men that by the heat of perverse Disputings against Amyraut, the Arminians, &c. have been carried into such extremes.

What mercy is it to a man to have Pleasure here a while, and Torment in Hell forever? yea to have Christ and Life offered him to make him more inexcusable and miserable.

In all this Discourse, it is not the nature of the mercy in itself that you deny, but God's merciful Intents: It is your mis-apprehensions about Predestination, which you are vending all this while, and there is the Core of your mistake, which we have sufficiently spoken to already. You talk as if God decreed men to Sin, to reject Christ, to abuse Mercies, to Impenitency, and consequently to Hell for so doing; which is all false. God decreed no man to these, or any other sin, nor to any punishment, but as for sin by them committed against his holy Law, which he foresaw, but willed not. Yea God decreed to set open the door of Grace▪ to Sinners, and to tender them mercy when they deserved misery, and to bring Life to the acceptance or refusal of their own Wills, and to entreat and importune them to accept it: His end in giving them mercy, is not to make them miserable, though consequently he will their misery for their sin. Now you feign in your own erroneous Imagination, that God first decreeth men's sin and damnation, and then giveth them all which we call Mercies as a means thereto, and then denominate them as bad as you have feigned them to be by such a • imagination. And you conceive of God's Decree as that which doth transire in praeteritum, is past and gone, when to God all time is nothing, but eternity is one everlasting instant.

When you have talked all that you can for such kind of Mercy, it will not satisfy a man's understanding, who believeth that most of the world shall be damned, and that God fore-knew this from eternity, and would not prevent it when he easily could. Mercy that ends in Hell is sad mercy: He will have mercy on whom he will have mercy.

Even under the terrible Law at Mount Sinai, God proclaimeth his Name and Nature, As gracious and abundant in Mercy. This Glory of his which he shown to Moses, is more gloriously shown to the World in Christ. And this you study perversely to obscure. And when you have contracted Salvation itself out of our own brain, into a narrower compass than God in Scripture doth, (who in every Nation accepteth them that fear him, and work Righteousness,) then you devise false Decrees and Intents, and father them on God to obscure the rest. And what do you by this, but seek to render God as little comely to his Creatures as you can. And if the love of God be Holiness and Happiness; If his Amiableness be his Goodness, even Himself; If it be Christ's great Work to reveal God in his Goodness, and by Faith to kindle holy Love. And if it be the Devils malignity and work in the World to counterwork Christ, and represent God as unlovely, judge whether you serve Christ or Satan, and whether it be not his chief work of enmity against God that you carry on?

But that you may have the true prospect of God's goodness in all this, you must remember that God's Work as Creator goeth before his Work of Government, and his Work of Government in general before his Work of our Redemption; and his Work of Redemption and the Law of Grace before men's sin and Judgment. And 1. If God that hath diversified all lower Creatures as we see, did please in the Creation to make a rank of free-intellectual Creatures here on Earth, with power and help sufficient to attain to an Angelical Glory, if they would not willfully prefer the way of misery, is there any want of goodness in making such a World? Are they not nobler than Bruits that have no such hope, though not than Angels that are confirmed.

2. And if he take pleasure having made such an Intellectual free Agent, to rule him morally by Laws, according to his nature, and to take it for his own great work to be his King or Rector in this sapiential way: That which much deludeth men in this, and wrongeth God, is that these foundations in Nature are not well considered. The issue of all the Atheists and discontented Unbelievers Accusations of God, is but this, That he made man but man, and nothing higher. A man is a mutable Intellectual free Agent, whose duty and happiness is left much to his own choosing or refusing. And being so made, he is accordingly to be governed; And as God showeth his greatness of Power as Creator and Actor of the universal frame of Nature, so he hath chosen eminently to show his Regent Wisdom, in his moral Government of Men and Angels; And his wondrous Love, as the special Benefactor to the Vessels of Mercy. Power, Wisdom and Love (or Goodness) are never separated; But each hath its eminent demonstration. And the Omnipotent Father is most eminently glorified in his Power in the Creation, and sustentation and motion of the Universe; so the Son who is the Wisdom and Word of the Father (and the Father in him) is eminently glorified in his Wisdom in the Regency of the Intellectual World, by a sapiential way of Government by Laws and Judgment. And then steps up the physical Disputer, and profanely blasphemeth this honorable Work of God, and calleth it moral Operation in contempt, and thinks that unless God move man to every Volition, as he doth the appetite of a Beast, if not as we move a stone, or shoot an Arrow, he doth nothing, and it is his reproach. And to say that he can or did make a Creature that can freely will or not comparatively, even by the Power and general Concurse of God, they say is to feign him to make a God. And so both the Honor of God as Creator is denied him, and his Honor of sapiential Government is vilified.

It is an excellent Work of the Creator to make a free Agent in his own Image. And it is a suitable and excellent Work as his King, to appoint him his end, and means, and work, and rule him by perfect Laws and Judgments. In all which also he acteth as a Benefactor, while he freely offereth him so glorious a Reward, to which as Rector he would lead him. And in that Relation will not be wanting unto him in anything, which perfect Regiment requireth.

3. Consider also that Divine Love (the third Principle) as it hath its common demonstration and glory in the Works of the Omnipotent Creation, and in the Works of sapiential Regiment, so hath it also its peculiar eminent demonstration on the Elect in their Grace and Glory, or in their Holiness and Glory begun and perfected. And it doth not follow that because this Love is eminently glorified on a peculiar treasure, therefore there is no Glory in God's other Works, or no reason for them. O that men had the wit to be humble, and confess that God is wiser and better than they, till they can come to more Wisdom to understand the Methods and Reason of his Works.

As God hath his Honor in making Stars as well as the Sun, and Earth, as well as Stars, and Beasts, as well as Men, and Serpents and Toads as well as Birds, and Clay as well as Gold; so hath he his Honor in making a World of mutable defectible Intellectual free Agents (Men) as well as in making the confirmed Angels; and in gracious sapiential Government of them all, as well as in his extraordinary Beneficence and Love to his Elect.

4. And you must not feign the damnation of the Wicked themselves to be any such state as is inconsistent with the goodness of God to cast a Sinner into: We know not perfectly what Hell is: But as we know that it is the extremist human misery, so we know that it is not at all worse than men's sins deserve; And that when we come to Heaven, we shall be perfectly satisfied of the Justice of God in men's damnation.

And though I say not melius est peccatori miserum esse quam non esse; yet I will so far accord with worthy Dr. Twisse, as to say that melius est peccatores miseros esse quam non esse: Because else God would rather have annihilated them. For God doth that which is best: And his Wisdom, and Will, and Glory are fitter Rules of Meliority, than the Will or Interest of Sinners.

And it seemeth by the Devils Kingdom, and Conversation in the Air and on the Earth (while yet they are in Hell, and reserved in Chains of Darkness) that their Hell is a state consistent with all that voluntary mischievous negotiation which they do. And it's like that though they have no Joy, yet their Wills have some pleasedness in the mischief which they do, as an angry and malicious man hath in revenge.

And we have no reason to believe that the Hell of the damned is any worse or more violent or irrational than the Hell of the Devils, when they must go to that which was prepared for the Devils, Matth. 25.

But if I should but open to you the plain evidence of this truth, how much of Hell consisteth in their sin itself, in which undoubtedly they are voluntary (though necessarily so, by their own doing and desert,) it might tend yet more to the abatement of all disparaging and unbelieving thoughts, of the Glory of God's gracious sapiential Regiment of the World.

And to say that God could have made man better, and given him more Grace, is but as to say that he could have made Toads to be Larks, and Beasts to be Men, and Men to be Angels: And what if he did not?

5. And I again repeat what I have oft said, that all this Earth is but a point next inconsiderable in the vast Universe; And immeasurable spaces of those superior parts of the Creation are like to have proportionable Inhabitants for glory and number: And we know that we are come to an innumerable Company of Angels, Heb. 12. 23, 24. And for ought we know God may have millions of blessed Spirits, for one miserable wicked Soul. Therefore we must not talk against that which we do not understand.

And if the Saints shall judge (wicked) Angels, and the World, (judging being usually put for ruling and punishing) we know not what hand we shall have ourselves in the execution of God's Wrath upon them, and how far they shall be as Slaves to Saints.

You have said that (I confess) that tendeth to reconcile us all to God's Providence; But whether it will reconcile our own differences I doubt. How is that Grace sufficient to all men for Salvation, which never telleth most of a Christ, or of Salvation at all?

You mistake your Adversaries. They hold not that all men have sufficient Grace to Salvation: But sufficient to help them nearer to Salvation. I tell you again, no Saint hath Grace sufficient to his full Salvation, till he is fully saved: Otherwise what need he anymore? Some indeed call it mediately sufficient to Salvation, but that's but lis de nomine.

If it be sufficient, what need they anymore to that which it is said sufficient for? And yet more would do that which is not done. But no man should desire more than is sufficient.

All this is a Game at words: By [Sufficient] they mean only necessary help, without which the act cannot be done, and with which it can and may be done: They do not mean all that is needful ad cert • esse, or ad melius esse. Therefore I use rather to call it All necessary help or Grace ad esse.

I pray you yet make it plainer to me, what that necessary or sufficient Grace is, that we may judge of it.

Grace is taken either for the Favor of God, or for his Gifts. And so either for free Gifts without merit in point of commutative Justice: And so all that God giveth to any Creature, must needs be Grace. Or else for that which is given contrary to commerit (of evil). And so all is Grace which is given to Sinners.

Grace is either, 1. Efficient-principal. 2. Efficient less-principal. 3. Objective. 4. Or subjective, which is the effect.

I. Grace as the principal efficient, is either God's mere Benevolence or Will to give. 2. Or his Act of Collation, as ex parte agentis. Both these are really one, and God himself, though differently denominated, and diversely conceived of by us. God operateth per essentiam.

II. Grace as the less principal efficient, is all those means which have an Aptitude to effect (and so are apt to be efficients) or actually do so; As Christ, the Gospel, the Ministry, outward Mercies, Afflictions, &c.

III. Objective Grace is those means which as Objects are appointed for man himself to act upon towards his own Salvation. As a Christ to be believed in and accepted, An offered Glory, a certain Promise, &c.

IV. Subjective Grace is that effect which is wrought on man's Soul, as the beginning of his recovery or healing, and having a tendency to more.

Now tell us which of these it is that is sufficient.

I. Undoubtedly there is no insufficiency in God. All that he willeth to do, he doth: And if he will no more, his Will is not to be called insufficient as to more, but null as to that Object: And we affirm no other proper Will of God, but such as is fulfilled.

II. God's means which wicked men enjoy are the same that the godly enjoy, and are sufficient ex parte sui, but not ex omni parte, that is, for as much as concerneth their own Office. So Christ's antecedent Preparations, his Satisfaction and Merits are sufficient. The Covenant of Grace is sufficient: The preaching of the Gospel is sufficient in its kind, &c.

III. The objective Grace is sufficient; that is, God as he is to be believed in and loved, revealed in the Word and in his Works: Christ to be believed in; the Precepts to be obeyed, the Promise to be trusted, &c. And though it be doubtful to many whether Amyraut and his Fellows were in the right, that thought that the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , and other objective Grace be qua objective, sufficient to all Heathens for Salvation; yet none can doubt but it is in suo genere, sufficient to all those good and holy acts which those persons may immediately exercise about them. And indeed he that loveth God but as the light of Nature, hath taught Heathens, or may teach men that he should be loved, if he be damned, must be a damned Saint in the love of God. But who do so love him, is another question.

IV. Subjective Grace is either Power, Act, or Disposition or Habit.

1. This Power is the very thing precisely which they meant by necessary or sufficient Grace. All men have true power to draw nearer Salvation, and do better than they do, though not immediately to do all that is necessary to Salvation. And he that can do it if he will, and also hath power to will it, is said to have sufficient Grace, which if he use not, the fault lieth in his willfulness.

2. The Act, nor the just Disposition or Habit they have not. But that is their own fault, who had those Means, those Objects, and that Power by which they could and might have attained them.

Is any one ever converted by this sufficient Grace, or not? If not, frustra fit potentia, &c. If yea, then it is effectual Grace.

Now you have brought the Controversy to the parting point, where the two Parties use to part: (As you may see in Dr. Sanderson and Dr. Hamond 's Letters.

I will first answer your Consequences. 1. Non frustra fit talis potentia, though it never act. For 1. It attaineth other good ends, though it attain not their Salvation. 2. If one of a thousand should not use their power, or if a thousand to one do use it, that varieth not the case: For it is still as much vain to that one man, as if no one used it. But 2. So far as it is vain, that is, to their own Salvation, they make it vain themselves, and must blame themselves.

3. I ask you whether you think not yourself, that 1. All wicked men by common Grace; 2. And all godly men by special Grace, have power to do more good and forbear more evil than they do? If so, Do you hold that all that power which they never use to any of those omitted acts is vain? If not, why should this in question be accounted vain?

But to the great difficulty itself, I answer, 1. You must not forestall the Truth by any of these false suppositions.

1. That there is any man to whom God giveth a mere Power, neither disposed, nor provoked to the Act. For 1. Mans natural faculty itself, besides natural power, hath all these aptitudes to the Act. 1. Man hath self-love, and a desire of felicity, and an unwillingness and fear of Hell and Misery, and of all that he knoweth doth tend to it as such. He can seek for Glory, Honor and Immortality, Rom. 2. And therefore God thus argueth with men, Ezek. 33. Turn ye, why will ye die? And 1 Pet. 3. 10. He that loveth life, and would see good days, &c. as making use of a common principle.

2. Man hath reason to understand what is told him of Good and Evil in some sort, and Nature containeth a Law written in the heart, Rom. 3. by which the Heathens did much of that which was written in the Scripture.

3. Man hath a Conscience to accuse and excuse.

4. He hath misery and necessity to move him: which may be known to him by common light and experience.

5. Sin, as sin is in common disgrace in the World: And Nature teacheth Mankind to distinguish moral Good and Evil; so that the worst do not love and own sin as sin: And did not Satan hide it with some veil of goodness, he could not draw them to it. Even those that murdered Christ, did it on a false pretence that he was a Sinner.

6. Mans nature hath an enmity to Devils, and a fear of them. And therefore will fly from evil so far as they perceive the Devil in it (for the most part.) For he is their known Enemy.

7. Lastly, All do known that they must die, and that this World will serve them but a little while; And they have great experience of its vanity and vexation: And Nature teacheth most, and the Gospel much more, that man's Soul is immortal, and therefore that there is a Reward for the Good, and Punishment for the Bad hereafter.

2. And as depraved Nature itself hath certainly all these advantages for good; so God addeth by his Works and Word many vehement Motives, Perswasions, and urgent Exhortations, Examples, Mercies and Corrections: And all these may give the Soul much more than a bare power to many good acts: For many such are really done by bad men; And to others they are almost persuaded, when they disobey.

2. You must not suppose, that just the same degree of means or help is necessary to one man as to another; or to the same man ever at several times. For one man's Soul may be more undisposed and ill disposed than another's: And the same man's more at one time than at another. And temptations and impediments may be greater at one time, and to one man than another. Experience assureth us, that less teaching will inform one man's understanding than another's.

Have not all men the same degree of Original Sin? What can be said more of any than is said of all, that they are dead in sin?

1. The same word [Dead] may be used of all, if it were words only that you plead for. But that word proveth not that all are equally either guilty or corrupted. For though Adam 's sin be the same to all, yet I have before told you (and shown you besides Scripture, Augustine 's judgment for it) that there is also a participation of Guilt of nearer Parents sins by Infants; And consequently of Pravity: Were it but the ill temper of body which many Drunkards and Adulterers convey to their Children, experience telleth us that it doth much in hindering the Soul. And all are not equal in this derivation of Original Sin.

2. And Adam 's sin, with all other being pardoned to faithful Parents, is in them pardoned to their Infants dedicated to God; And we have reason to think that where the Guilt is pardoned, the Vice is not equally transmitted as to others that are not pardoned in their infancy.

3. And it is not only Original Sin, but much additional Pravity, and particular habits of sin, contracted by practice, which is the impediment of Conversion.

4. Yea, and actual sin itself, which temptations stir up, as well as those habits.

5. And also the great guilt which all those acts and habits do contract, by which God's Grace is yet more forfeited. All these are a great disparity, and show that more Grace is necessary to some than others.

Well! Go on with your Answer to the main Question?

My Answer is, that▪ if you will not turn Vorstians, but will receive the common metaphysical School Divinity about God, (to deny which, is commonly called Blasphemy by all Parties) I do not yet see any place for a disagreement. For the Question, [Whether the same measure of Grace which we call merely sufficient, is ever effectual?] is meant either, 1. Of God's Agency or Influx as it is Agentis. 2. Or of the Means. 3. Or of the Objects. 4. Or of Effects in the Soul.

And 1. It is plainly the first that the most Contenders mean, upon a false supposition. They think that God puts forth one degree of strength to one effect, and another degree to another effect; and so that ex parte Dei operantis, there is a different Operation (in kind or degree) to the producing of different effects: which is blasphemy in the Judgment of the Philosophical Divines: For though we are fain to use the name of Act and Influx, yet it is nothing but God's own Essence (in Power, Wisdom and Will) by which he produceth all effects. And (to say) that God's Essence is divers in kind or degrees, is contrary to his Simplicity and Immutability. And if all God's Operation (from the creation of the World to the moving of a Feather, and from the converting of Saul to the least gracious action of a Saint,) be done by the same kind and degree of power, and there be no difference at all in God or his Agency, but only as in passo in the effect, then the very supposition of your dispute, and the Subject being nothing, you may see how wisely you have long troubled the World.

But it is inconceivable that there should be variety in the Effects, when the Cause hath no difference at all in its agency ex parte sui.

How now! Did the Calvinists so much stir up King James against Vorstius, and condemn him in the Synod of Dort; and now must we plead against you as Vorstians? Did not one God, without any diversity in himself, make all the variety of Creatures in the World? Can he not unica volitione velle plurima? And so unica action plurima efficere? All multitude proceedeth from perfect Unity.

But God's Influx or Action seemeth to be somewhat else than his Essence.

You must mean ex parte Dei, or you say nothing: And if so, it must be some Creature: For besides the Creator and the Creature there is nothing.

Action is not Res, but modus agentis. And so it may be in God.

Some indeed make the three Persons to be three Modes in God, which yet others deny: But otherwise it is commonly taken for blasphemy, to say that God who is most simple and immutable, hath any true mode distinct from his simple Essence, much more that his Essence hath diversity of modes. And if you will deny this, we must make a whole new method of Divinity, and such as will most accommodate the Arminians.

But to say that God doth Influere vel agere, and to say that he is God, are not words of the same signification.

True: For they are different Conceptions that narrow-minded man must have about God in whom there is no difference. We have our general conception of Essence, and Perfections, and Relation, which we express by the Name GOD; And we have one more particular, yea our modal conceptions and expressions: And to express the one, is not to express the other. But that proveth no diversity in God.

If Actio be in Passo, then it is not God, but a Creature.

That old saying is but de nomine actionis. Doubtless there is of created Agents a certain modus by which in Action they differ from themselves; not-agent and agere signifieth somewhat distinct from the effect, which is it that is in Passo, and is called Passion. And if it be only quid creatum, or the effect that you mean, we will after speak of that: But now the question is of the efficient Causality.

By this rule we must say that ex parte Dei, to will Peter's Salvation and Judas his Damnation, are all one.

So all Philosophical Divines affirm: save only that the same Will unvaried in itself, is variously related and denominated ab extra from the diversity of Objects and Effects.

At least then we may here denominate God's Operations on several Souls, as various from the variety of Effects.

You may and must do so: But then remember that the question is but de nomine, and that you confess that there is no real diversity in all God's Operations on men's Souls on his part, no not in degrees.

II. And then as to the means, though for my part I think that a great diversity is caused by their diversity, yet you yourselves will not consent, that the question about sufficiency and efficacy be there laid. 1. Because it is a moral operation: and you think that some other physical operation causeth the difference. 2. Because many that live under the most excellent means are not converted, when some are that had far less. 3. Because you suppose no means sufficient of itself: and no means insufficient when God will work by it.

But if this must be the question, it must be remembered that you grant, 1. That means are but sufficient for their own part, and not ad omnia: and therefore suppose somewhat in the person (disposition or use) to make them effectual. 2. And that God is the Author of means: and that in themselves they are the same oft to good and bad. But 3. That the diversity of men's dispositions maketh the same less suitable to one, which is now suitable and consequently more effectual to another. So that here is the same Grace oft times as in the means, made various by variety of Reception. And so that which you are to say of God herein is this, that when some wicked Parents have more vitiated their Posterity than others, and when some wicked men by their practices have more vitiated themselves, yet God doth not always give them a greater proportion of gracious means and helps than to others, but leaveth them under the common helps which convert the more prepared Souls. Not that God always doth so: For oft times to his Elect he doth as he did by Paul, or the Eunuch, vouchsafe them extraordinary means. For as a Benefactor he is free, and may do with his own as he list, and may make Vessels of Mercy and Honor of them that deserved worst. And the case of the Tyrians and Sidonians, compared with theirs of Capernaum and Bethsaida, doth prove, that less means are proportionable to some as being less ill-disposed, when greater to others may be ineffectual.

III. And then as to objective Grace, it being the same God, the same Heaven, the same Christ, and the same Promise which is set before all that have the Gospel, this cannot be the Controversy. Though the revealing means be divers with many, so is not the Object, nor the Means to all.

IV. All that remaineth then to be questioned, is the Effect which is subjective Grace: whether that Grace in one man which is but sufficient, be efficient in another? or in the same man at several times. And here by this subjective Grace is meant either, 1. The vis impressa. 2. Or the Power. 3. Or the Act produced. 4. Or the Disposition or Habit.

The two latter are shut out of the question; which is not whether the Act or Habit be sufficient and effectual, but whether the Grace be so that is to cause them.

Whether this vis impressa be always caused by means with God's Power set home (as the impress of a Signature by the Arm and Seal) or be caused immediately by God, without any proper means, the word being but a Concomitant, and not mediate Operator, is made a Controversy by some: But he that well considereth the Scripture here abouts, and the experience of man, will be likelier to think that it is God by means that ordinarily maketh the impress on the Soul, and that the same impress is the effect of both, though extraordinarily God can do without means. For 1. It is most likely that God should work on man most agreeably to his nature, and to his subject state under God his Governor. 2. And Christ himself as our Teacher and Example, and all his Gospel, are appointed to this use. 3. The Ministry and Ordinances are appointed to the same end; And Ministers commanded to fit their teaching to that end. 4. No man can prove that ever any came to actual Knowledge, Faith or Love, but by some means. Experience telleth God's Servants that he worketh by them. 5. The most apt and powerful usually have best success; and those prosper most in Grace that use means best, and those speed worst that use them least. 6. God strictly commandeth the use of the means as means for that end, that his Grace may be wrought by them. 7. God promiseth his blessing on the means: Act. 26. 17, 18. 1 send thee to open their eyes, &c. Rom. 1. 16. The Gospel is the Power of God to Salvation. 2 Tim. 4. 16. Thou shalt save thyself and them that hear thee. Jam. 6. last. He that converteth a Sinner, saveth a Soul from death, &c. 8. When God forsaketh a Nation, by taking away the means, he usually forsaketh them as to further Grace. 9. The Devil seemeth to know this by his earnest opposition to a holy powerful Ministry, and other means throughout the World; so that we may say with Cypriam, Epist. 69. ad Pupian. Ut etiam qui non credebant Deo Episcopum Constit • enti, vel Diab • lo credebant Episcopum proscribenti.

But whether it be by means or not, it must be somewhat different from God's own Essence, which is imprinted or communicated. And to get a formal conception of it, what it is, if it be not the Power, Disposition, Act or Habit, is past man's reach. Whatsoever it is, this is certain, 1. That God doth not give an Act as a thing pre-existent; but giving Faith is but causing us to believe, or do that act ourselves, which was none till we performed it. 2. That quoad effectum disposed Power and Act also, are more than Power and Disposition without the act. 3. Undoubtedly the same degree of impress, or influx, or force, which causeth one man to believe or act, is not sufficient to cause any other worse disposed man to believe or act: nor the same man when he is more ill disposed and hindered. 4. If we put the case of men equally disposed, it is impossibly to prove that any two men in the world are equally disposed; Nay it is most probable that they are not: Their minds having far greater variety of thoughts to cause a difference, than their countenances have of particles, making the wonderful diversity which we see. Nor is the same man long equally disposed. 5. Men equally disposed (if such there were) may have unequal impediments without, and in their bodies, and temptations, which may cause them to need unequal help of Grace. 6. The same individual Impress which causeth no more than a Power, causeth not the Act also; For that is a contradiction; to cause the Act and not to cause it. 7. But a less degree of impulse or help may cause the act in one, when a greater degree causeth it not in another. 8. A wonderful difference therefore is made in this as well as in • ll other diversities in the World, by the diverse receptive dispositions of the Patient. Which made Johan. Sarisberiensis (in Nugis Curial.) and many School-men to liken God (with some acknowledged difference) in his Operations to the Sun, which by one invaried efflux of motive, illuminative and calefactive power, causeth innumerable varieties of effects, as all the particular Creatures have various Natures and receptive Dispositions. 9. But all good disposition or preparation is of God; But by such ways of operation as we are searching after. But all ill disposition is from ourselves. 10. To conclude, God giveth men sometimes as much power to Will or Act, when they do not, as they have when they do. But (usually) not an equal predisposition, some having more indisposed themselves; which is to be changed by contrary acts. But whether de facto men equally enabled, predisposed, helped and hindered, do yet without any cause but their own free-will itself act or will variously, is a question that these Controversies need not come to: That such (were there such in the World) could do it, I take for granted, whatever they do.

The Controversy is well known which Hobbes hath raised in the World, who saith, That to be free and to be willing is all one; and that every act of the Will is as truly necessitated by physical premotion, as the motions of any Engine are; And that we talk of liberty and contingency in the dark, not that there is any such thing indeed, but when we know not the train of Causes, we use those names, which signify but our ignorance: And that the first Cause and other superior Causes do by premotion as much necessitate each Volition, as the Archer doth the motion of his Arrow. And the Dominicans predetermination, and Cameron 's necessitation by a train of second Causes is the same I think. But I think God hath made a very good use (by his over-ruling ordination) of the Doctrine of Hobbes, (learnedly and timorously, or cautelously seconded by Gassendi, and improved by Benedictus Spinosa, an Apostate Jew in his Tractatus Politico-theologicus.) For the goodness and learning of such worthy men as were Alvarez, Twisse, Cameron, (in all other points moderate and admirably judicious) hath been the grand temptation to the Church to receive that Doctrine, which Hobbes and Spinosa having plainly and nakedly propounded, is now detested by almost all good men. For from thence they have plainly inferred the subversion of all morality as distinct from physical motion, and consequently of all true Religion.

I deny not that I find myself the Controversy in itself exceeding difficult; and that I have not been without temptations to their Opinion, nor yet am: And that indeed, all pretended middle ways between Hobbes, his Necessitation Physical, and true Free-will, are but fancies as far as I can perceive.

And if I leave true Free-will, I must turn to their necessitation. I confess their arguing is very plausible; that there is no Effect without a Cause; and that when ever the Will chooseth one thing, and refuseth another, there is some antecedent Cause in the power, disposition, or external things: and that the same Cause in the same state and mode, having no difference in itself, doth always produce the same effect: Otherwise the diversity should have no cause: And that the Will being in the same disposition, and having all the same objects, helps, impediments and other circumstances, will have the same acts.

All this is plausible: But 1. If I receive it, I must let go almost all Religion (as well as Christianity); of the truth of which I have a better proof than they can give for their Opinion. And we must not reduce certainties to the obscurest unsearchable uncertainties.

2. And in God himself their foundation is confuted: For he that is the first Cause eodem modo se habens sine ulla diversitate, unicus plurima, immo omnia causat. Therefore their Principle is false.

3. And finding man made after the Image of God, not only as holy, but as man, (Gen. 6.) I have great reason to think that Free-will is part of his natural Image, and that as God is a causa unica plurimorum, so may Free-will be: And that as a God is causa prima entium, so Free-will may be a kind of causa prima (not actionis qua talis, but) of the comparative moral species of its own acts, (as choosing this thing rather than that) which is no addition to real entity, but a wonderful mode of it, which man cannot tell whether he should call something or nothing.

4. I say therefore that here is no Effect without a Cause: Free-will may be the cause of various Effects, without a various predisposition.

Doth not the Will act as it is disposed to act?

That it acteth not always according to Habits, which are more than dispositions, is certain by experience. For objects oft prevail against habits; and habits do not necessitate.

That is because the Will is otherwise disposed by some contrary stronger habits: As either by the habit of sensuality, or the natural inclination to felicity as such: which may bear down weaker particular habits or inclinations.

No doubt but the Will is quaedam natura, and hath its natural inclination to good and felicity, which is its pondus and radical disposition to its acts; from which every act is caused that is done. But I say not that ever it goeth contrary to these radical necessitating inclinations to goodness. But de mediis it may have inferior particular habits which it oft goeth against.

That is because the Understanding conceiveth that another thing is best; and so it is necessitated by the Understanding.

The Understanding guideth, but doth not necessitate. That we Will rightly is caused by the Understanding (as that I hit the way is by my eye-sight) but not that I exercise the Act itself. Though we Will not without or against the last strongest dictate of the practical Intellect; yet 1. Note that the Intellect hath divers perceptions at once (which is not commonly noted). It doth at once act a deep simple apprehension that e. g. bonum sensible is pleasant, and good, and amiable; and that bonum spiritual which cometh into competition, is yet better, may be at the same time perceived, with so low, dull and weak an apprehension, as that the Will may tenaciously so adhere to the first simple apprehension by a strong simple Volition, as that the second weak comparate apprehension may not move it to Election. 2. For we find that it is not the objective truth of an apprehension which turneth the Will, without some answerable clearness and liveliness▪ And as a Preacher that dreamingly speaketh of great things uncontroulably, but coldly, moveth not the hearers, so is it with the Intellect itself. And 3. The Will being principium exercitii can hinder the Understanding from perceiving truth, by hindering it from thinking of the evidence. 4. And the Will itself can suspend its own act, contrary to the understandings fluggish dictate. And not acting when it can (towards God, and true goodness,) is the beginning of all the disorders of the Soul.

But saith Cameron, &c. the Will is appetitus rationals: And if it act against reason, it acteth not as a Will: And so also if it act without reason: Therefore it cannot forbid the Intellect to think (by nolition) unless the Intellect first say, Non cogitandum est. Nor can it choose but velle cogitare if the Intellect say cogitandum est: Otherwise the Will were a brutish, and not a rational appetite.

1. The Will acteth by reason, when it cleaveth to that good which is simply apprehended by the Intellect. The simple apprehension goeth first; e. g. [That this Fruit offered Eve is good and desirable]: This is true, and here the Will adhereth to it as good. Then should the understanding think comparatively of a greater Good, and say [This is evil as forbidden and as it hindereth a greater Good:] And this it performeth not, because the Will is here the beginner of the Sin: not perhaps by a positive nolition or forbidding the Intellect the comparing Thought; (for that it doth not without show of reason) but by neglecting or omitting to excite the Understanding ad exercitium; which it is brought to in Adam and Eve, 1. By diversion, being before taken up with the Creature. 2. By voluntary neglect or sloth. For the Will can omit its act without reason, and yet be a rational appetite. And the beginning of the Sin may be this omission of the Will, or its over tenacious adhering to sensible good, apprehended truly by the Intellect.

2. And we have not so much acquaintance with the faculties of our own Souls, as to be sure that sense, and passion, and fantasy can do nothing immediately on the Will to help or hinder it. We find that the Will easily followeth Passion, and very hardly goeth against it.

3. Nay we are not certain, but there may be more bruitishness and less reason in many Sins, than most imagine; and that the violence of the sensitive appetite and passion, may not prevail both with the Will to forbear the excitation of the Intellect, and with the Intellect to omit its opposite Judgment, though neither Will or Reason in the first instant give consent. There are some also that think that we are scarce sure that the Will and the sensitive Appetite are two several faculties, rather than one between two guides. I say not as they: But this I will say, that I grow daily more confident, that they that make the rational and sensitive Soul in man to be two, and their Brethren, that without all show of proof, magisterially face us down, that the Soul at death puts off all sense (because it exerciseth it not by the same Organs which were adapted to the Bodies use), do both of them heinously wrong the Church, and darken many Truths, and open the way to Infidelity.

But you cannot lay the beginning of sin on the Wills omission, to put the Intellect on the comparing thoughts; for the Intellect can understand against our Wills (as many know that which they had rather be ignorant of): And therefore needs not the Will ad exercitium.

The Intellect may be forced: But it is not so always: Things sensible, and near at hand, may force the Intellect: But things unseen and distant must be voluntarily thought on, and studied, or else they will not be understood.

If e. g. Eves Will had said to the Intellect, [Cogita Comparative] either the Intellect must first have said to the Will, [Comparative cogitandum est] or not: If not, then that Will would have been no rational Will. If yea, then the Will must have consented, or else been unwilling against reason, and so be brutish still. Therefore Sin must begin at the Intellect.

1. The Intellect did not say [Comparative cogitandum est] not only because it was not commanded so to say by the Will; but because the Will was so entangled before by the simple Love of the Creature, as diverted the thoughts from the Creator. 2. Suppose the Intellect did say coldly [Comparative cogitandum est] the Will did neglect it; being not necessitated thereby, and so the Intellect went no further.

If the Will do velle bonum qua bonum necessario, it must needs necessarily velle bonum cognitum, and so must follow the Intellect.

It doth necessarily velle bonum quando vult, i. e. non malum; but it doth not necessarily velle hoc, vel illud bonum inter plurima: Nay though the Intellect say nothing against it, yea something for it, the pre-engaged Will may neglect it. And yet possibly Eves Intellect did perform one comparative act which occasioned her further sin, viz. [If thou turn thy thoughts towards God's prohibition, thou wilt lose the pleasant good before thee]. And this was true.

But if Eve's Will first over tenaciously stuck to the forbidden Creature, when the Understanding never said, It must do so; In so doing it was not a Will, but brutish Appetite.

The Understanding said truly, [It is pleasant and Appetible] and so the Will in its initial desire sinned not. But that it looked no further, and excited not the Intellect to remember, and itself to desire more to please God, was by an abuse of its power and liberty of self-determining, and so the sensible good prevailed, because the superior good was forgotten and neglected. And the Will may thus suspend its act after an intellectual perception, without being brutish, though it so • ar disobey Reason its guide.

These things are exceeding intricate and difficult, for all that you say.

They are so: But forget not, that the great difficulty is between us and the Hobbists or Infidels, and Fatists, and not between the true Christians among themselves, as to our present Controversies. I confess that the confuting of their Opinion, that [all Volitions are necessitated unavoidably by God's Operation] is a far harder work than the reconciling of the Lutherans and Calvinists, who go upon no such Principles.

Tell me, Is this it that you would come to or not? If you once persuade me that God causeth all sinful Volitions as necessarily as he causeth a Tree to grow, and that man can no more avoid them, and that liberty of Will signifieth no more than velle, or not nolens velle, and so that God is the prime irresistible cause of all Sin, as much as of all Good, so far as it is capable of a Cause.] I must needs next believe, 1. That God hateth not his own Work: yea that he loveth it. 2. That he hateth no man for it. 3. That moral Good and Evil is nothing in man, but such as obeying or disobeying (proportionably) in a Horse or Dog. 4. Yea far less; because man doth • ut as my pen which writeth as I move it, in respect to God: But so is not my Horse or Dog to me. 5. And how then to judge of all the Scripture, the Ministry, of the Incarnation and Death of Christ, of the Duties of a Christian life, of Hell, &c. it's easy to perceive, viz. That as God differenceth Men and Toads merely because he will do so; even so doth he the good and the bad in the World: and that Sin is no evil any way but to ourselves: and that God is as much the cause of it as of Sickness; and is as well pleased with the Worlds Infidelity and Impiety, as with the Churches Sanctity; And that he will no otherwise damn men for Sin, than erbitarily to make such baser than others, as Dogs are than men; Benedictus Spinosa hath given you the Consectaries more at large.

O how heartlessly should I preach and pray, how carelessly should I live, if once you brought me to this Opinion, that all sin is the unresistible Work of God (so far as it is a work) as much as holiness is?

If there be no middle between Free-will and this Impiety (as I confess I cannot disprove your Consectaries) it's time for us to turn our studies against the common Enemies of all Religion and Morality, instead of contending with one another: specially when they have so much to say.

And do you think they do well, and friendly by the Church, who take these men's part, and own their Cause in the foundation; and entangle poor Souls in such intricate difficulties; when we that know not the least of God's Creatures, or the mysteries of any of his Works, do little know all the quick and intricate actions of our own Souls.

In a word, man hath more power to good than he useth, and that power is called sufficient or necessary Grace to the act; though there be many difficulties which no one of either side can resolve.

But I fear many of them with Pelagius by GRACE do mean nothing but Nature itself, at least when they speak of the Heathens, who they say have some kind of Grace.

Turn your eyes a little from the name of Pelagius, and everything else that useth to blind Disputers with prejudice and partiality, and then answer me these following questions.

Quest. 1. Do you think that Mercy contrary to sinful Commerit is not properly Grace?

I confess it is?

Quest. 2. Is not the whole frame of Human Nature (and our Utensils) put into the hand and power of Christ the Redeemer, to be managed by him to his Mediatory ends, Joh. 17. 2. Math. 28. 19, 20. Joh. 13. 3. Ephes. 1. 22, 23. Phil. 2. 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. For this end he died, rose and revived, that he might be Lord both of the Dead and Living. Rom. 14. 9. Joh. 5. 22, 23, 24. The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all Judgment to the Son, &c. And is not the very reprieval of the World from deserved ruin and misery so many thousand years an Act of Grace? and Nature now continued, used and improved by Grace, and so far may be said to be of Grace?

This is plain truth, and must not be denied.

Quest. 3. Is it not undeserved Mercy to all Mankind, that ever since Adam 's Sentence, Gen. 3. 15. they are all ruled by a Law of Grace, and not the Law of Innocency alone, and by that Law of Grace must all be judged?

If you before evinced that anything is truly mercy to the Reprobate, I must confess it. But I have not before so much thought of this, what Law the World is under, as the case deserveth: But I remember Cameron in the fragments of his dispute with Courcellaeus taken by Testardus, though he deny not that the Covenant of Grace was made with all mankind in Adam and Noah, yet saith, That by or for their nearer Parents sins the Infants of Infidels are out of that Covenant.

1. It's well you note, that it is not only Augustine (Enchir. ad La • rent.) and I that are for the Imputation of nearer Parents sin, in some sort, as well as Adam 's. 2. He speaketh there of the Covenant as mutual, and not as a Law, or an offered Covenant, or Divine Disposition, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 ▪ (of which Grotius speaketh at large in his Preface to Annotat. in Evang.) And so I say the same as Cameron: which is but this, that though it be a Law or offered Covenant of Grace, and not the sole Law of Innocency, which the whole World are now under as Subjects to be ruled and judged by it. Yet no Parent that consenteth not, hath any right to the promised benefits, nor is in it as a mutual Covenant (unless as any counterfeiting consent may oblige themselves) nor are the Children of such Parents any true Heirs of the said promised benefits for the sake of remote Ancestors, as long as their nearest Parents are Infidels. This is all that Cameron there maintaineth.

Quest. 3. Are not all the teachings, helps, means, time, and innunerable Mercies which Heathens and Infields have contrary to their Commerits, and consequently truly Grace?

They are at best but common Grace. But I am loath to grant that Nature is so much, if I could deny it.

I am sorry that unwillingness and willingness can do so much with you about these matters. But I pray tell me, Quest. 4. What is it that you mean by Nature?

I mean that fixed order of being and operation which God put all things in at their Creations at the beginning.

You have done as the Incendiaries of the Church have done from the beginning of contentious Disputes: you have chosen a word unexplained to make a ma • ter of reproach of, which hath so many significations, and is so uncertainly used, that Philosophers themselves, even in their greatest accurateness, know not what to fix upon; though there are few words which they are more concerned to be agreed in, if they could. But where the thing is unknown, no wonder if there be discord about the Name. Fortun, Licetue alone de natura primo move • te may suffice to evince this. But I perceive you take not Nature for Principium motus et quietis, &c. nor for the essence of things, matter or form, or both▪ nor with Scotus de potentia for the passive power, nor in other senses usually intended by various Writers: But for the created status & ordo rerum, and the motus thereby alone caused. And if this he NATURE with you, you cast yourself into inextricable difficulties to know what you say. For 1. We are very much ignorant of second Causes, and their concatenation and co-operations; whoever took in pieces this great Engine of the Universe (as men do a Clock or Watch) to find out the form and compagination of each part? or ever understood it. 2. Who can tell certainly what is done by this compagination of Causes and co-operation according to its primitive state, who knoweth not the whole Engine, but some parts alone (not so much as one sand is to the whole Earth) seeing that it is the whole that co-operateth to the foredescribed motions? And 3. Who knoweth how far God hath fixed the state and operation of second Causes? and how far he is pleased to alter them from their first state and course of motion, or daily doth it? 4. And who is so well acquainted with the state of the Universe in the Creation, and the state of it now, as to be able to make an ac •• rate comparison, and tell whether or how much it is since then altered? or whether all things continue just as in the beginning. 5. Yea it is certain, that a great alteration was made both on man's Soul and Body, and on the Earth by the sin of Adam, and the Curse. 6. And it is certain, that God maketh much use of the Ministry of free Agents in the affairs of the World, even of Angels, Devils and Men, whose voluntary contingent acts (and consequently their effects) go not as a Watch or Cl •• k in one constant natural course of motion. How then can you tell here what is natural as to a great part of the changes upon man?

You would make me believe that WORDS are so defecti •• as to delude us and befool us all, and that nothing men say can be understood. Doth not all the World distinguish between Nature and Grace?

The vanity of speculative Sciences, and the misery of Mankind thereby, and the reason of Paul 's contempt of the Philosophy then predicated, and the cause of all our love-killing Contentions, cannot be readilier assigned than by charging them on the lamentable defectiveness and ambiguity of words next to the darkness of Human Intellect. But the distinguishing of Nature and Grace is needful; but must be rightly understood. 1. Principally as Nature signifieth the constitution of man and all things as made by their Creator, and GRACE the medela or medicinal Operation of God, by which he recovereth the lapsed sinful and cursed World. 2. And as any Motus, Action or Change, can be said to be from the first natural Principles of Action, so far they may be called natural: If from Nature alone, they are only natural. But as they come from recovering Grace they are gracious: If from Grace alone, without Nature, they are only gracious (whether there be any such, or any but Miracles, I pass by.) But as they are by and from Nature, either sanctified, or ordered and over-ruled by Grace, so they are both natural and gracious in several respects.

This seemeth plain and true: and what do you hence infer.

1. All degrees of the medela or recovery of Nature are so many degrees of Grace.

2. Exparte Dei efficientis, the operations of Grace and Nature really are all one, and differ not: That is, God doth per essentiam operate in both, and his operating Essence is the same. But as the nature of a thing in its original or constitutive Principles are one thing, and the recovery of it from its vitiated state another; so relatively the same God, and his Will and Operations are to be variously denominated; even as he is the God and Fountain of Nature, and as he is the God and Giver of Grace.

3. I think it is past man's skill to prove that most Miracles themselves have no part of natural Operation in them. It is sufficient of God interpose and over-rule the matter by any other immediate Operation of his own: yea or that he put natural Operations themselves out of that course, in which they would have gone if he had not so altered it.

4. By this you may plainly see that though all natural Operations are not gracious; All gracious Operations are also natural, except the highest sort of Miracles: that is, they are the Actions of some natural Principles, ordered by God's gracious Will to a gracious end, in a gracious manner. I also except such Operations of God alone, in which he useth no second Cause, but himself immediately without any instrument produceth the effect. But note, 1. That this is only in the Reception of the Divine immediate influx itself on the Soul, antecedent to our very first Acts: For our first Act (e. g. of Faith) is from God's Influx on our own natural faculties, and so from those faculties themselves as suscitated by God. 2. Note that this is no distinction between natural and gracious Operations, to be so immediate: For God doth as immediately operate in the natural: As in the Creation he made all the World by such immediate efflux, so he still operateth immediately on the first created Cause (whatever that is), and say almost all Divines) even when he useth second Causes, he himself is as near the Recipient and Effect, & immediatione suppositi & virtutis, as if he had used no second Cause at all: The difference being not in his distance or proximity, but in his using or not using a second Cause together with himself.

5. Moreover it is utterly unknown to us how far God operateth without any second Cause, even on the Soul itself. As we know that Devils do much on the wicked, so we know not how far he useth the Angels or superior Intelligences in operating on the Elect: And yet we will not go so far as Aristotle did, in ascribing to the primum mobile. But as God is said to write with his own Finger the Law on the two Tables, and yet that Law was delivered by Angels; and as God is said to appear and speak to Adam and many others, when yet it must needs be quid creatum, which Human senses could see and hear; Even so we know not when God operateth on the Soul, what spiritual Ministry he may use.

And now tell me again, what it is that you accuse them of, that you think turn Nature into Grace?

According to your explication I must mean nothing else, but that the name of Grace is given by them to Nature alone, with the natural operation is not gracious.

Wherein is it that they thus err? Instance in particulars.

1. When they make God's common Providences to be Grace: 2. When they make the preaching of the Gospel to be Grace. 3. When they make Reason and Free-will to be Grace.

I. Do you not believe that all God's merciful Providences are acts of Grace? Are they not mercy contrary to merit, which is the definition of Grace in the general? And have they not an aptitude and tendency in medelam animarum to man's Recovery, which is the specification of Evangelical Grace?

Yes, I grant all this: But we take Grace for the inward saving work of God's sanctifying Spirit on the Soul.

1. You do not only strive about words; but perversely abuse words, that you may have matter of strife. Will you confine the general name of Grace, not only to a Species, but to one inferior Species, and then accuse your Brethren for giving the name to other Species? As if you would accuse them for calling any besides a Philosopher or a Soldier a man? And 2. Do you know either Jesuit, Lutheran or Arminian, that holdeth that outward common Providences are inward Sanctification?

Let that pass, and go to the second.

II. Do you doubt whether the preaching of the Gospel be Grace? either as to the general or special definition?

I deny not that the definitions agree to it; but I doubt whether it be a fit name, when use hath appropriated it to the inward Sanctification.

1. Here again you are convinced of striving about words: 2. And till you are forced, you confess it not, but make it seem a material difference. 3. You confess that your Adversaries name agreeth with the definition. 4. When you have abused the name yourselves by erroneous confinement of it to one species of Grace, you then plead your own sinful use as a reason sufficient against Etymology, Definition, the custom of all the Christian Churches from the beginning to this day; yea and against Scripture itself. 5. For the Scripture so useth the word, as you may see (sometimes for merciful Providences, sometimes for the Gospel, sometimes for Church-Privileges, for Gifts, sometimes for Favor, and oft for recovering mercy in the general) Ezra 9. 8. Zech. 4. 7. Joh. 1. 16, 17. Act. 4. 33. & 14. 3. & 20. 24, 32. Rom. 1. 5. & 5. 2. & 20. & 6. 14. 15. & 11. 5, 7. & 12. 3. 6. & 15. 15. 1 Cor. 10. 30. 2 Cor. 8. 19. Gal. 1. 6. 15. & 5. 4. Eph. 3. 8. & 4. 8. & 4. 7. Phil. 1. 7. Jud. 4. 1 Pet. 4. 10. & 5. 12. Tit. 2. 11. Eph. 3. 2, 7. Col. 1. 6. 2 Cor. 6. 1.

Go on to the third instance.

1. Who do you know that calleth Reason and natural Free-will in itself considered, by the name of Grace: I know not any such? 2. But 1. Reason as reprieved in order to recovery, and Reason as illuminated by common Grace, (and so Free-will) are certainly a sort of common Grace. 2. And Reason as specially illuminated, and the Will as freed from Sin, are special Grace.

But now you see the injury of your Charge, will you search and fear, lest even by contending, it's you that have run into worser than the Error which you declaim against as other men's. Is it not you that call a great deal of God's Grace by the name of Nature, yea sometimes of Wrath; and as I before evinced, deny much common Grace to be any Grace at all? And who wrongeth God more? He that honoreth his Works of Nature with an undue title (of Grace)? or he that utterly dishonoreth his Grace, and saith that it is no Grace?

They make Grace to be but a moral Operation or suasion, and seem to deny that physical operation which is eminently Grace: or at least take it to be but a physical use of moral means; And indeed I doubt whether some of them confess any other Grace than the Gospel and other means of Grace? And so the Spirit must work only on the Preacher, or on the sound of words, if he work not immediately and physically on the heart.

Still I fear that you are guilty of striving about words to no profit, but subversion of the people's Charity.

1. Moral hath usually three different senses. 1. Moral is as much as Reputative; As he that concealeth or encourageth a Traitor or Murderer, or defendeth not the assaulted, is, ex lege morum, reputed and judged as guilty of the Treason or Murder. And thus causa moralis is usually but causa ex lege morum reputata.

2. Moral is oft taken for Ethical, or that which is ex genere moris, either Good or Evil, Virtue or Vice, which contain all morality.

3. Moral is oft opposed to merely natural (forced, brutish, &c.) and meaneth the action of a free Agent as such. In which of these senses, or what other do you take it.

I mean the first, that God doth but operate ut causa moralis per modum proponentis objectum; which Dr. Twisse saith is but in genere causae finalis, and so is but operatio metaphorica.

It's pity that Christ's Disciples must be troubled with such uncertain arbitrary notions, without necessity. But what remedy: 1. I know no Law that forbiddeth me to dissent from Dr. Twisse, or you in Logic or Physicks. I do not believe that objectum qua tale is causa finalis: And no wonder; For 2. I hold that to be no proper cause which you call commonly causa finalis; And instead of advancing each Object to the dignity of a final cause, I take down the final cause to the order or rank of the prime Object of Volition or Intention. To be optimum is the Ratio objectiva primaria, it being most suitable to the Will. To be medium ad optimum is the Ratio objectiva secundaria. Bonum qua tale non agit in voluntatem, sed voluntas in bonum cognitum: Though the cognitio boni doth dirigere voluntatem. When it is commonly said, [Ob finem amatum volo medium, the preposition deceiveth us, as if the causalitas sinis were upon the Will: But it meaneth no more but that the Aptitude of the means, ad finem, is the Ratio bonitatis, and so the Ratio objectiva medii: I will or choose it, because it is apt or conducible to the end or chief object; that is, That it is Goodness for which I will it. Which speaketh no more but Rationem objectivam. 3. And all objects of the intellect and will are causes indeed of the act in specie; but what causes, Receptive and Terminative, such as we must call Material (so far as an act may be said to have matter) of which more anon.

And if the object be no other than a material or receptive cause, constituting the act in specie, then the proposer of the object, who operateth but in subservience to it, can be no other than a preparer and offerer of the matter. But how great a hand this receptive cause hath in the mutations and diversities in the world, is little considered by the most.

2. But I pray you tell me, How many, and whom do you find that hold that God doth no more but proponere objectum? I remember none.

What say they less when they call it Moral suasion, when suadere is but proponere objectum?

So then, your accusations are your own Inferences, and not their words. But do they not commonly tell you of an inward suasion by the Spirit (and Conscience) as well as an outward by the word?

Yes they do so; but that inward is but suasion still.

But are you sure that by suasion they mean nothing but proposing the Object to the Intellect, and by it the Will.

What else can they mean, if they speak congruously?

As far as I can understand them they mostly differ not from the Synodists at all, in their meaning; (much less do the School-men and L • therans, who use not the word [suasion] so much as they.) For the thing that they mean is 1. That God's Spirit worketh on the Intellect by objective means, (though not only propounding that object, but also assisting and exciting the mind.) 2 That by the apprehension of the Intellect, the wills object is offered to it: And as Cameron copiously pleadeth the act of the will is ever excited by the act of the Intellect. (Or indeed the object is so aptly presented, as that the will shall or may either by Natural or Gracious Inclination excite itself, supposing God's assistance.) But that the will is not moved, to any but an Apprehended Good. 3. And that God doth this work on the will in a sweet connatural manner; like as an effectual persuader doth, not forcing the Will, but preserving its liberty: and as the Arminians speak, not irresistibly, or by necessitation, leaving the act to be contingent. 4. But withal, it is most certain, that God operateth on the Mind and Will itself, and not on the Preacher of the Word only. 5. But no mortal man knoweth how; nor is able to comprehend his way of operation.

11. But next tell me what you mean by Physical, which is the other branch of your distinction?

What should I mean but Natural, by Real Contact, attingency or influx on the Recipient?

1. God is above Nature, and not included in your Physicks: How then do you call his operations Physical, ex parte agentis. No Physicks pretend to treat of God.

2. Contact and proper attingency belongeth to Bodies: But God is not a Body; and therefore the Contact or Influx by which he operateth, is utterly unknown to mortal man, any farther than that it is by his Essence.

3. God is immense and essentially everywhere; and therefore such a Metaphysical Attingency or Contact, as may be spoken of him, he hath to all things in the world; and therefore must do all that he any way doth in such attingency.

Explain it and resolve it yourself, if you like not my Explication.

God's operations are called Physical or Moral, 1. In regard of God the Agent. 2. In regard of the means or second causes. 3. Or in respect of the effect.

I. In respect of God the Agent they are not properly either Physical or Moral, but transcendently they are above both; for they are his Essence and Will, which is the transcendent Head of all operations and causes, Physical and Moral.

II. As to the Means or second Causes, those acts of God that have no such means or causes are not here concerned: And as for all those that have such means, no doubt but they are to be called both Physical and Moral: for Morality is but Modality or Relation, ex rerum ordine. And all Order, Mode and Relation, is Alicujus entis ordo, Modus & Relatio. And e. g. preaching the Gospel, is such an act of a Physical and Moral Agent, as is itself both Physical and Moral. Man is quaedam natura, and yet Intellectual and Free: And his act is quid physicum in genere entis; and yet quid morale in genere moris, & imputanda juxta l • egem morum.

III. And as to the Effect, it is no doubt, both quid physicum (for Faith is actus realis) and quid morale: For it is morale bonum, & ita reputanda. And will any Arminian deny any of this, that understandeth words? Where then is your difference in this?

But when you dispute about Pre-determination, you can say it is not Physical: what mean you by it then?

We marvel that men should say that God physically pre-determineth the Will to all acts of sin in the specifying circumstances, when as he pre-determineth it not really to them at all, either physically or morally. So that it is here a Real efficient motion of God to the evil act, which we deny.

And it is a Real efficient motion of God, to the act of Faith and Repentance which we assert, and mean by the word Physical.

And this your Adversaries will not deny: and so you are in this agreed.

I doubt they hold not Faith to be infused, but acquired: whereas Dr. Twisse showeth the difference to be so great, that an unjustified person may have an Acquired Faith about the same objects, when yet only an Infused Faith will justify.

1. Tell not me what you Doubt, but what you Prove, unless you mean no more, than to tell me of your injustice and uncharitableness: I find the Jesuits and Lutherans commonly asserting an Infused Faith, and I have met with few Arminians if any that deny it; though the word be not so much in use with them.

2. But because you that are the Accuser are supposed to understand what you speak against, I pray help me to understand it.

Quest. 1. What mean you by Acquired Faith?

That which we ourselves get by our use of means and consideration.

Quest. 2. Is there any man in his wits that denieth Faith to be the effect of consideration? Do you not think what and why you must believe, and even believe in and by Thinking or Considering. Do you believe, and not think what or why?

No, but it is by Infusion that we have those thoughts.

Infused Faith then is by Infused Thoughts: Be it so; but then it is not without Thoughts or Consideration. But further;

Quest. 3. Is there any Christian that denieth that Faith cometh by hearing, and the use of the means which God hath appointed us? I pray you hear Dr. Twisse against Hord, pag. 169.

It is one thing for God to work with the Word, and another thing to work by the Word: The first we confess; But if God work by the Word, then he must operate first on the Word, which is the Preachers act; and so by that Word on the soul, and not immediately: Therefore I rather think that the word is a concomitant than an instrumental cause.

1. You wrong yourself and Christ in that you will not believe him, John 3. that we mortals know not the way and manner of the Spirits accesses and operations on the soul, anymore than the cause of the wind whose sound we hear. Do you not know, that you do not know how God's Spirit moveth our intellect and wills, and how he maketh use of instruments; except secundum quid in some particles revealed.

2. An hundred Texts of Scripture (which I omit lest I be tedious) tell us that the Word is a means or subordinate cause (to God) of his informing and reforming operations on men's souls. And it's dangerous to dream of any second cause that is so concomitant as to be but co-ordinate with the first cause, and not subordinate to it. And the word is not only subordinate to God as Instituter by Legislation and Declaration, but also to God as efficient operator.

3. God can work two ways by the Word, which are within our reach (besides others) 1. As it is the act of the speaker, by exciting and illuminating him. 2. As it is the species (as they call it) received by the senses and imagination, which God can by his power set home to the attainment of the due effect.

4. And yet I know not any, or many of your Adversaries that deny that besides this Divine operation by the Word, God hath another immediately on the soul, exciting it to operate upon the Word, as the vis plastica vitalis materna operatur in semen jam receptum. But I will here forbear to trouble you with the physical difficulties, whether the Word heard be only objectum intellectus, or also causa efficiens (as light is both to the eye.) And whether it be operative on the intellect, or only terminative, with other such like.

Well I must grant you that all Infused Faith (as to the act) is Acquired: But all Acquired Faith not Infused: but infusion is added to our own endeavors, like the creation of the human soul.

I am glad that we are got so far on towards peace. But Quest. 4. What mean you by Infusion? Is it not a Metaphor?

Yes, and we mean that immediate persuasion of God which you even confess to be besides his operation by the Word, and by our Cogitations. Even a Creation of an act or habit.

Quest. 5. Is it the name [Infusion] or the thing that you plead for?

The name (though I confess Metaphors must not be used unnecessarily in Disputes) is yet convenient: but that I leave indifferent.

Quest. 6. Do you not think that the act of Faith is the act of man's own Intellect, and Will, or Soul, and that immediately.

Yes, that cannot be denied.

If so, then when you say that our act is Infused, I hope you will confess the term to be none of the plainest; and you only mean that God's Grace doth so operate on the faculty as to excite it so to act; and consequently that the thing first and properly infused is not the act of Faith itself, but the vis impressa facultatem, before described, by which the act is caused: And so in a secondary sense the act may be called Infused, but not most immediately.

I confess it is the habit which we commonly take to be Infused; and therefore we use to distinguish habitus infusos ab habitibus acquisitis, rather than actus infusos ab actibus acquisitis.

Is that Habit before the Act or after it?

You know that it is a Controversy among ourselves. Mr. Pemble saith it is before, and the common opinion is, that it is after the first special Act.

1. I once received that from Mr. Pemble (ignorantly.) But that cometh to us by not distinguishing the vis impressa or first received influx of the spirit from a Habit: when as Ames well saith, it is fitter called semen fidei vel dispositio quaedam, than a Habit of Faith. For 1. no man can prove such an antecedent habit; and therefore none should assert it. 2. The true nature of a Habit consisteth in a promptitude to perform that special act with facility. But that we should have such a promptitude and facility not only while we are Infant Christians, but no Christians; as having not yet believed in Christ, is not probable according to our commonest observation. 3. All other Habits follow the Acts, and therefore we have little reason to say it is otherwise here.

Doth the Soul believe before it is inclined or disposed to it?

Inclination is a hard word, and belongeth both to Natural Inclination (such as we have to Felicity) and to Habits, and to mere Dispositions. And a pre-disposition we grant: As when you spur your Horse, you make him first the patient of your act, and by suscitating his natural faculty, you dispose him to a speedy motion: though the similitude doth not quadrare per omnia, because God's influx is on the whole Soul itself. But this Disposition to the present act, is far less than a proper Habit; or it's another thing.

When I spur my Horse, or whip my Dog, I do but stir up a former faculty, or slothful power: But God giveth a new life and power to them that were dead in sin.

Yet, I cannot take words for matter. 1. It's nothing but the natural faculty or power which you suscitate in the beast: And hath not an unbeliever the Natural faculties or power? Is he not a man? Why do you not bury him, if he be not alive? 2. Death in sin is relative, or real: The Relative is Reatus mortis, which denominateth men filios mortis, and is done away by pardon. The real is the Privation of a holy disposition to the act of Faith and Repentance, &c. or of the Act itself, or of the Habit. You can name no other. Now 1. the death which consisteth in the privation of the first disposition to act (supposing all natural dispositions) is taken away by the first influx or suscitation of the Holy Ghost. 2. And by the same in secunda instanti is caused the Act, and the death gone that lay in its privation. 3. And (in the third instant, or afterward by degrees) is taken away the death which lieth in the privation of the Habit. And this giving the Habit, is called in Scripture and by Divines Sanctification